


whose woods these are (I think I know.)

by Reiaji



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: #LetAdrienBeADisneyPrincess2k19, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Cinderella Elements, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Marichat, Mutual Pining, ladrien
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2019-12-26 14:11:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 44,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18283892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reiaji/pseuds/Reiaji
Summary: Four years after his future turns to cinders, Adrien is a servant in the house he was meant to inherit. Disowned by his father and abused by his stepmother, his days are filled with drudgery until he meets a masked huntress in the forest behind his father's chateau.As his friendship with Ladybug turns to first love, he dreams of a future spent at her side.Then, on the eve of the Princess's masquerade, he meets his guardian—and is granted a wish.[Ladrien Cinderella AU]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
> 
> I'm weak for Ladrien and this is the consequence.

The wood is full of whispering, and the forest knows his name. 

The rich canopy of hickory and beech rustles in the breeze like his mother’s voice, and the briars tug his coat like hands. By now, Adrien knows better than to listen. The old enchantments pass him by in a stream of murmured memory, flooding and ebbing in time to his footsteps.

He’s an hour off the path, circling the sprawled roots of a grandfather oak, when he sees her. At first he takes her for another ghost. The stories about the forest are centuries old: tales of wisdom and of warning; of witches and wisps and the wicked fey; of dead things singing deep in the wood. 

He looks again, and her shape solidifies. A girl, curled up on the mossy bank. She's clad in brilliant red and black, crimson linen and oiled leather, a bow and quiver strapped to her back. Adrien can just glimpse the slope of her cheek and the blood matting her night-black hair. 

Even so, he’s careful in his approach, his footfalls silent as he scans the trees around them. When he rolls her over, one hand cushioning her injured head, she groans. Adrien stiffens and looks down into her face—a face concealed by a fitted half-mask, scarlet porcelain spotted with black. 

Her eyes crack open, sky blue slits. 

Adrien's mouth dries up like a creek.

"Miss, can you hear me?" Unbidden, his fingers comb her hair, searching for the source of the crusted blood. “Are you alright?”

It’s a miracle he keeps his hands steady, but his desire not to cause her pain outweighs the anxious clench in his chest. What if she’s concussed, or her skull is cracked? No one knows he’s out here. They’re hours away from anyone who could help. 

After a moment, the girl reaches one arm above her head and grips his wrist gently, pulling it down to her side. 

“Who are you?” Her voice is quiet, but even. “What are you doing in the forest?”

“I’m no one,” he says, his stepmother’s words lodging in his throat as he speaks them. When her eyes narrow, he adds, “I live a morning’s walk from here. Our chateau is outside the woods.”

“Your chateau?” the girl asks, pushing herself upright on her elbows. Her expression is still dazed, but her tone is sharp. 

"My father's," says Adrien, "and my stepmother's." He supposes it isn't his, not anymore. Not since Chloe was written into his father’s will. "But you're hurt. The staff will help you. If I run, I can be back before sunset."

"It’s alright." She lets go of his wrist and turns her head. "See for yourself. I'm not hurt."

Adrien stares, but it’s the truth. There’s no wound and no contusion, only deep black hair and the curve of her pale neck. A blood-red gem, one of a paired set, glints in the lobe of her exposed ear: smooth as a pearl, but rich in hue as a dwarven ruby. 

It's strange. Everything about her is strange. The red of her silks stand out miles away in the sunlit greens and golds of the forest, and her jewels are easy targets for thieves. She looks sixteen, seventeen, no older than he is; but he can't see the daughter of a noble family wandering the woods without an escort. And the mask on her face is oddest of all—who is here to see her? Who besides _him?_

“You can call me Ladybug,” she says, and Adrien bites back a laugh. 

“You don’t have to tell me who you are if you don’t want to, but do I really look like a witch to you?”

Something about that seems to amuse her. “Even if you’re not a witch, I can’t tell you my true name.”

“Well,” he says softly, “Adrien is mine.” 

Ladybug looks him up and down. Bit by bit, the tension seeps out of her. Her shoulders loosen, her spine straightens, and her hands unfist where they rest at her sides. After a moment, Adrien breaks the silence.

“If you’re not hurt, then what happened to you? And why are you out here alone?"

"A man called out to me as I was walking,” she says slowly. “I thought he was lost, and he caught me off guard. I didn't even see his face." She shakes her head, her brow furrowed. "I suppose he meant to rob me, but he lost his nerve and ran. If I wasn't protected, I'd be dead.”

Her response creates more questions than it does answers, but Adrien doesn't ask. Whatever spell or spirit protects her, he's grateful for it.

"I've never run into anyone else here," he murmurs. "People don't like to travel through." 

"Not often,” she agrees. "But I'm one of the king's rangers, and this forest is part of my patrol. Sometimes bandits drive a caravan from the path, or some reckless merchant takes a shortcut too close to dusk." She moves to stand, and Adrien starts, worried that she'll sway or stumble. But Ladybug shows no sign of injury. He watches as she dusts off her tunic and tucks her traveling cloak about her.

"Sometimes they come on purpose, hoping they'll see their dead. Grief is a bitter brew to swallow."

Adrien looks away and says, "I see."

Curiously, she catches his gaze. He holds it only a moment before he lets his eyes fall, color rising to his cheeks. Half is the stutter in his pulse, drawing his unwitting attention to her eyes, her lips, the freckles across her nose. But half is embarrassment, and the familiar sting of shame. 

He can only imagine how he looks. Patched coat and threadbare trousers, stained soot-black from kneeling in the hearth. Ash on his hands and beneath his blunt nails. His mother's lineage had been well respected, but no one would know him as Emilie's son.

Her eyes soften as he stands there, racking his memory of Chloe’s prattle for some harmless topic to fill the quiet.

"Adrien," she begins. His name is sweet on her lips. "I'm sorry to ask this of you, when you've been so kind. But what I need right now, more than anything, is food."

Adrien opens and closes his mouth. The reasonable thing to do—the _proper_ thing to do—would be to bring her back to the estate. Dinner is only a few hours away, and the kitchens always save their finest for passing emissaries from King Dupain. But then he'd have to explain how he found her, and how he’d come to be in the woods. His stomach plummets into his boots. 

"A few bites would be enough,” she says softly. "Bread or anything sweet would be best, but I'm not picky. Please."

The earnestness of her request—however strange—does him in. Adrien reaches into the pocket of his coat and produces several biscuits, wrapped in a handkerchief. He'd snuck it from the kitchens while helping the cook with dinner. She'll have thrown out the scraps from the servants' meal by the time he makes it back to the manor, but he's gone without before. 

"This is all I brought with me. If you want it, you can have it." 

"Perfect." Ladybug's smile is brilliant. Her leather-gloved hand brushes Adrien's bare fingers, and he starts as though his skin has sparked fire. "Thank you, Adrien. I'm in your debt."

"It's nothing," he whispers. "I'm sorry I don't have more."

"I'll make it up to you the next time I pass through." Ladybug tucks the biscuits into an embroidered pouch at her waist. Then, without warning, she grasps his hand in both her own. The steady drumming in Adrien's ears surges to a roaring tempo, and he wonders, for an instant, if she truly is a ghost— some fey creature from the dreaming plane, with night in her hair and magic in her fingertips. 

“Until next time,” he says, barely believing his own words. 

Ladybug’s smile crinkles her masked eyes, and then Adrien is alone by the ancient oak. 

  


* * *

  


He doesn’t expect to see her again. Luck is rare in Adrien’s life, and he’s learned to distrust his rare stroke of fortune. But it’s less than a fortnight before she appears again, as sudden and as brilliant as a star falling to earth.

It's a warm afternoon, and he's alone at the house. He looks forward to the days his stepmother takes Chloe to court, leaving at sunrise and returning at dusk. Now that his sister is entering society, there's an endless series of plays and parties that require her attendance in the city. It's a privilege Adrien has never envied, as much as her snide asides suggest otherwise. 

He's at the well in the courtyard, drawing water for the washing. One minute he's alone as always; the next he straightens, and she's standing beside him. 

Adrien yelps. Only his grip on the handle of the pump stops him from flinching backwards and toppling onto his arse.

"Sorry!" Ladybug winces, her nose adorably scrunched. "I'm sorry. I called out at the gate, but nobody came."

"It's just me here," Adrien says after a moment. Apparently, a moment is all that he needs to be a clumsy dolt in front of his first _ever_ visitor.

"I didn't mean to disturb you," she says apologetically. "Would you like some company? The work goes faster with two pairs of hands.”

"I’d love that," he blurts. It's far too hasty, and he curses his awkwardness. "I mean, I'd be honored to keep you company. But this is servants' work, and you're a guest. My father would never let me hear the end of it."

"Work is work," she says with a shrug, already stripping her gloves and cloak. Adrien dumps his bucket into the washtub and grabs two handfuls of dirty linen, forcibly dragging his eyes from the back of her head. 

"Right," he croaks, and tries his best not to breathe as she eases into her place beside him. 

The work _does_ go faster, because Ladybug is a storyteller on par with any bard. She regales him with tales of her time as a ranger, the odd creatures and even odder beings she'd encountered in the king’s commission. There's a man who could take the shape of any animal, from a tiny insect to a ferocious bear. An eccentric musician with a dragon as a pet. A witch who changed the weather with the aid of a magical umbrella, summoning great winds with a snap of her fingers. They're straight out of a virtuoso's playbook; but the way Ladybug tells them, with fire in her eyes and suds flying from her expressive hands, makes every word sound truer than true.

"You think I'm exaggerating, don't you?" she says in good humor, as the last of the washing is hung on the line. "Well, just because you don't believe me doesn't mean it isn't the truth. I'll have you know I hate liars almost as much as I hate laundry."

"I think you could tell me that my father was the king, and I'd believe it because it came out of your mouth."

Ladybug flushes and fumbles the tub, splashing dirty water onto them both. Adrien can't do anything but laugh, but the notion that he can affect her so starkly brings a spark of warmth to his chest. 

"Well," she says shyly, "I didn't come for that. I came to thank you for helping me, and to give you this." 

His polite denial dies on his lips as she takes a small bag from her abandoned satchel. Even through the wax paper, the smell is mouthwatering. He’s abruptly reminded he hasn't eaten since last night, and when Ladybug folds the paper back to reveal a half dozen warm croissants, the last of his resistance crumbles to dust. 

“You didn't have to,” he mumbles through the first mouthful. It tastes as good as it smells: buttery and flaky on the outside, laced with chocolate on the inside. He eats it slowly, savoring its texture, holding each bite on his tongue until it melts. 

They sit beneath the lemon tree at the edge of the courtyard, thigh against thigh to share the meager shade. Adrien sneaks a glance from beneath his bangs as Ladybug unwraps her own croissant. Every time he looks at her, he finds another thing he likes. Her lips, her eyes, the archery calluses on her fingers, the downward sweep of her dark, dark lashes. 

"Are you often the only one at home?" she asks. The question startles him, and he scrabbles for an answer.

"My father is part of the king's council," he says carefully. "He's on business in the city more often than not, so he only comes home a few times a year." As a child, the prospect of seeing his father would have kept him awake all night with excitement. He'd sneak into his parents' chambers and climb into bed beside his mother, knowing she'd indulge him in an early breakfast. He pushes the memory far from his mind, into the cobwebbed crevice where it belongs. 

"My stepmother and stepsister are at court today. They’ve been going more often ever since Chloe came of age. Getting married is all she ever talks about."

"A romantic, is she?"

Adrien snorts. "I don't think so."

"You don't go with her? I'm sure I’d remember if I'd seen you at court before."

“I have work to do here,” he says evasively. “And besides, my lady, I'm not all that memorable.”

“You are to me,” she answers simply, and the full implication of those four words sets Adrien’s head spinning like a draught of fine wine.

He doesn't trust himself to speak. How can he explain that he's a prisoner in his own house; that he’s his father's slave as much as his son?

There were always reasons, but Adrien doesn't know them. Only that the years since his mother's death have turned his father's coldness to contempt; that his abrupt re-marriage, a mutual convenience, had cut him out of his own inheritance; that the lessons of his childhood—in music, in language, in swordplay—had gradually been replaced by a different kind of schooling. 

Adrien doesn't need to know anything now, except how to keep his mouth shut and his eyes on the ground. He can't recall the moment when his father ceased to see him. It was a death of countless, countless cuts. 

"You make the capital sound so exciting," is what he finally—belatedly—manages. He returns Ladybug's smile with a small one of his own. Her grin widens, and if the jump in his pulse is any indication, Adrien thinks he might not survive the sight.

"It is, sometimes. But it's overwhelming too. Lately I find myself wanting to get away." Ladybug returns her eyes to her pastry, resting half-eaten in her lap. "The palace has been a snake's nest since the princess came of age. Your sister isn't the only noble with her sights set on a pedigreed marriage."

He finds himself grateful for the change of topic. It’s even one that he knows a bit about, thanks to Chloe’s endless pipeline of gossip. Everyone from the rat-catcher to the Countess of Champagne seems ready to share an opinion on the princess' engagement—everyone, he’s gathered, but the princess herself.

"Have you met her?" he asks, and Ladybug blinks. 

"Met who?"

"Princess Marinette. What is she like?"

Ladybug is quiet for a long while. Adrien takes another bite of his croissant. The silence is companionable, ripe with the sound of singing crickets and rustling leaves. 

At last, Ladybug picks up the empty bag and rises to her feet with a languid stretch.

"I came to the palace when I was a child, so I know the princess better than most." Her expression is hooded, and her lips quirk strangely. "She's untested, and that makes her afraid. Her greatest wish is to prove her own strength outside the sway of her father’s crown. But if she had to choose whether to be kind or strong, she'd rather be kind, and no queen at all.”

“Is that so strange?” says Adrien quietly.

“It depends on who you ask.” Ladybug pauses for effect. “Though I will admit that she has her flaws.”

 _Like being afraid?_ he thinks, but what comes out is, “Like what?”

“Well, she's an idiot when she falls in love, for one.” Ladybug turns aside and scrunches her nose comically. He can't see her face from where he’s sitting, but the tips of her ears are touched with pink. “Show her a kind heart with a pretty face attached, and her better judgment goes off with the faeries."

Adrien shakes his head, bemused. "That makes two of us, at least." 

Reveling in the unfamiliar fullness of his stomach, he gets to his feet and walks her to the gate. She hasn't been with him long—two hours, perhaps three—and already, he dreads her departure. Ladybug dons her discarded cloak and slings her satchel across her shoulder, then turns to face him with drawn brows and pursed lips. 

"Thank you for having me, Adrien. I had a lovely time. But before I go, I'm afraid I need to ask one more favor of you."

"What is it?" His heart thuds as he bears the full force of her appraisal, her blue eyes brilliant behind her mask. 

"Are you sure? I don't know if it's too much to ask."

"Of course. Anything." Even as he says it, he knows it's true.

Ladybug takes a deliberate step forward. Their bodies are almost flush, but he can’t bring himself to move. Instead, he's rooted to the earth where he stands, his mouth getting dryer and his cheeks getting darker as her expression breaks open in a mischievous grin.

"Would you call me your lady again? I didn't quite catch it the first time around.”

If Adrien had thought she would kill him _before_ , he'd clearly had no idea what was coming to him.

He tries to speak and stops several times, embarrassment and elation mixing in his gut to form a dizzying, dazzling cocktail. Heat creeps up his face and the back of his neck. Even without seeing his own reflection, he knows he must be splendidly scarlet.

“Have a safe journey home, my lady.” His voice cracks as he says it, but he can't stop himself from smiling. God, he's such a perfect _fool_. “I'm glad that...I mean, I hope you'll come this way again.”

“I will,” she says, with a cheerful wink. “I don't ask for favors unless I plan to return them.”

And with that, Ladybug takes her leave. 

Long after she vanishes across the meadow, Adrien stands looking at the shadow of the old wood, watching for the flash of scarlet silk where the light ends and the darkness begins.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I _may_ be a little bit magic myself.”
> 
> “Only a little?” says Adrien, raising his eyebrows. “Are you sure you aren't underselling?”
> 
> Ladybug throws her head back and laughs, the sound unfurling sweet as spring air, blooming and blooming in Adrien's chest. 
> 
> It takes almost nothing to decide then and there he'd do anything—everything—to hear it again.

The first of his father’s rules is this: Adrien is _never_ to go near the woods. 

(The last time he sees her, she slips into his bedroom and finds him still awake an hour past his bedtime. The fireplace is roaring, and he’s reading beside it, the toes of his slippers stained with soot from sitting so close to the iron grate. Instead of scolding him, she stoops to kiss his cheek. She tells him not to sleep with his hair still wet.

She’s gone the next morning, her cloak on its peg and her traveling satchel unpacked by her bed.)

  


* * *

  


Seven days later, Ladybug returns; and this time, he lets her in through the gate before she resorts to criminal trespass.

"Your house was on the way," she says by way of greeting. She passes him a paper box of _financiers_ and beams in response to his stammered thanks. "I'm making good time on today's patrol, but I still have an hour until the end of my circuit.”

It takes almost nothing to offer to join her. Barely thinking as he does it, Adrien fetches his cloak from the kitchen and follows Ladybug into the fields. Despite his long legs, she outpaces him easily, and he finds himself lengthening his stride to keep up. 

(If he thinks about it, _really_ thinks about it, there's nothing but the fence and a wide fringe of meadow between the edge of the woods and his father’s estate. Nothing but grass and ground and sky to stop him from running, and never coming back.)

A short walk later, they enter the forest boundary. Adrien exhales a sigh of relief, breathing in the familiar scents of rain and soil and dying leaves. The wood seems different with Ladybug at his side—a little less vast, a little less unknowable. It unravels itself for them, cool and inviting, a realm of green shadows and sun-touched paths. 

“So,” she begins, her tone conversational. “Are you always working in the middle of the day? You seem to be busy with chores whenever I see you."

Adrien opens the box of _financiers_ and offers one to Ladybug before biting into his own. As usual, he’s starving, and the pastries are flawless. The cakes melt like butter on the back of his tongue, flavored with dried cherry and slivers of almond. 

“It can’t be helped,” he replies. “If I were in charge of running the estate, I’d hire the locals to do the work around the grounds. But my stepmother refuses to take on more staff. She says they’re overpaid as is.”

“How would she know if she’s never around? You’re the one who’s here all the time.”

Adrien shrugs. The last time he’d raised the issue of help, it’d ended in words, and then in blows. _Why should I pay others to do your work? You're barely worth the cost of keeping you here._

“I guess I am,” he agrees, his tone bland. “I don’t really care about going to court.”

“I see.” Ladybug’s expression shutters, and she stares at her feet with a self-conscious smile. “I didn’t realize I’d taken up so much time talking about it.”

Too late, Adrien realizes his error. He backtracks frantically, cursing himself in silence, searching for a way to salvage the conversation. 

“It’s not that! It’s not you. I loved hearing your stories.” As though having his time taken up by _Ladybug_ isn’t a problem he wishes he had more often. “If I had the chance to choose, I’d be glad to live in the city. I just…”

His words are clumsy in his eagerness to explain, and he colors at the confusion that flits across her face.

“You just?...”

“My father wanted me to become a statesman, like he is. He’s always been disappointed I didn't take after him.” He swallows hard. Here it comes, the ugly truth. “He doesn't acknowledge me when he's at court. And he chose my sister as his heir.”

With that, his mouth clamps firmly shut. It feels like a betrayal; but then again, it's hardly a secret. It's in the way the staff ignore him; the way his sister pities him; the way his stepmother forbids him from speaking when noble guests convene at the house. Everyone knows what slights they can get away with, even if no one is willing to own them.

Ladybug stops in the middle of the footpath. Suddenly nauseous, he halts beside her. The forest presses in on every side, hushed as though to hear her answer.

“Your father’s a fool,” she says at last. “He deserves to lose you for what he’s done.”

Adrien blinks. Of all the ways he thought she might react—from contempt to anger to awkward discomfort—he'd neither expected nor prepared for sympathy.

"I know what it's like to have others blame you for falling outside their false expectations." Head held high, she turns to face him. "I can't change what he thinks about you, Adrien. But he can't change what I think about you, either."

Standing beside her in the dappled shade, the daylight turning golden around them, Adrien takes in her warm expression. In the face of her certainty, all he can feel is a fierce, scorching swell of gratitude. He aches to seal this moment in amber, her features looming large in his memory, and hide it away in some close, precious place. 

"Whatever you think about me, my lady, I only hope that you do it often."

She draws back in surprise, but she doesn't seem offended. On the contrary, her eyes only soften further—before she lifts her chin and meets his gaze boldly, a smirk playing about her lips. 

“And what if I say that I think you're charming, and not bad to look at beneath all that soot?" She flicks his nose with the tip of her finger, her smirk widening to Cheshire proportions. "What would you say to that, _beau gosse_?"

Adrien’s jaw drops. His mouth hangs open. 

"That's what I thought," she says, and _winks._

Every drop of blood in his body surges to his head at once, pounding in his ears and flooding his face with heat. A heartbeat passes, then another. Adrien scrambles for the words to respond, but only succeeds in gaping like a fish.

With the smuggest grin he's ever seen, Ladybug turns and pivots on her heel, red on green against the undergrowth as she leaves him burning beneath the trees. 

  


* * *

  


(The search takes weeks. Men and horses and baying hounds overrun the acreage of his father's estate. They come dressed in livery of every hue, from royal red to funerary black. A troop of rangers makes a foray into the forest, bringing supplies to last them three days: dried apples and oat cakes, skins of fresh water, and warm bedrolls lined in wool. 

They return empty-handed, having discovered nothing but endless ranks of murmuring trees.)

  


* * *

  


“I'm _so_ sorry,” he says for the hundredth time. “You really don't have to help me do this.”

“I don't mind.” Ladybug dips a rag into the bucket and wrings out a handful of soapy water. “Besides, you didn't know I was on my way here.”

Adrien scrubs furiously at a stain on the tiles, ignoring the ache in his lower back. “It’s just that I have to finish everything while there's daylight. I don't usually get time to rest until evening.”

"I can come by at night next time if that suits," she says, with a grimace of distaste at the filthy floor. "But if it helps you, then truly, this is fine.”

Too caught up in the promise of _next time_ to string his thoughts in coherent order, Adrien stutters his agreement. His fingers are suddenly too clumsy, too idle. What kind of spellspun world is this, where beautiful girls walk up to his doorstep and insist on involving themselves with his work?

Embarrassed as he is, it would be worse to turn her away. He’s far too selfish to refuse her company.

“You look like you've done this before,” he says, watching as Ladybug attacks her side of the floor with brisk swipes of a short-bristled brush.

“I have,” she replies. “Maman was a baker before she married Papa. She’s always preferred to keep her own kitchen, and I spent my whole childhood attached to her hip.”

It's the first time she's spoken of her father or mother. He's often wondered what kind of parents would raise their daughter to shoot and ride, to read directions from the trunks of trees, to navigate nobles and servants alike. Chloe would no sooner touch a wet rag than run naked through the woods in the light of the full moon. 

He smirks at that, then stifles a cough as Ladybug shoots him a curious look.

Of course he'd act like a gaping _fool_ in front of the most fascinating girl in France.

The girl who had told him she thought he was _handsome._

“Is baking something you like to do?” he asks, as he shifts to relieve the weight on his knees and hide his darkening face from her sight. Hopefully, Ladybug is too busy to notice the dire effects of her proximity. 

“I didn't use to mind it, but I didn't love it the way she did. When I'm not out here, I like to make things. Sewing, drawing, things like that.”

“I'd love to see one of your creations, my lady.”

“I'd love to make you something someday," she says warmly. "I’ve sewn a couple of dresses for court, but none that I can wear out here.”

It's hard to picture Ladybug in the frippery fashions so favored by Chloe and her friends—though that presents no obstacle to Adrien’s imagination, which gleefully swaps her linens for silks and her dark leathers for cloth-of-gold. He hunches further, his flush deepening.

Ladybug reaches over his shoulder and drops her rag into the half-full bucket. "What about you? There must be something that you do because you like it, not because it's required of you."

"I like spending time with you."

 _Damn it._ But before he can snatch his words from the air and stuff them back down his throat where they belong, he glimpses her face from the corner of his eye. 

Ladybug is staring straight ahead, cheeks red and lips pressed together. As he watches, she draws back her undirtied hand and fidgets with the ribbons tied in her hair. 

If he didn't know better, he'd think she was _flustered._

"But there are, um—I pass the time with other things." Adrien rambles on before the thought can take root, before he stops in his tracks to fully take in the brilliant blush on the back of her neck. "I used to like swordplay, when I was allowed to practice it. Music, too. I liked—I like to read."

"Is that so?" Ladybug clears her throat and needlessly smooths the front of her tunic. "What do you enjoy reading most?"

"It's been years since I studied them, but I loved the philosophers' texts. Astronomy and alchemy, but natural science most of all." It's hard to keep the wistfulness out of his voice. "And I love the oral stories, about monsters and magic."

Ladybug smiles and shakes her head. “You wouldn't like them so much when they're outside the stories.”

Collecting the muddied rags from the floor, Adrien gets slowly to his feet. He’ll boil them later to make sure they’re clean before he needs to use them the next day. 

“I suppose it must seem childish to you. I've heard of the akuma attacks in Paris."

“It's not childish to prefer monsters with claws and fangs to monsters in wigs and velvet waistcoats.” Her tone is lighter than her words imply. “As for magic, it's a real enough thing to believe in, though it's not so common here in France.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

Her smile is mischievous, keen around the edges. “If I told you, could you keep it a secret?”

Caught up in a spur of whimsy, he sweeps his arm behind his back and bends at the waist in an exaggerated bow. “My lady,” he says, in a tone of grave seriousness, “I’d guard your secrets with my life.”

Ladybug’s snicker is decidedly ungracious. Her giggles increase at his wounded expression, until she’s doubled over on the kitchen floor. Adrien takes her hand and helps her to her feet, taking no notice of the grime that stains them both.

“Please don't,” she says. “But since you're so sure, I'll tell you.”

With that, she leans in to a cheeky distance, her face still flushed a rosy pink. 

“I _may_ be a little bit magic myself.”

“Only a little?” says Adrien, raising his eyebrows. “Are you sure you aren't underselling?”

Ladybug throws her head back and laughs, the sound unfurling sweet as spring air, blooming and blooming in Adrien's chest. 

It takes almost nothing to decide then and there he'd do anything—everything—to hear it again. 

  


* * *

  


(Soon enough, the volunteers start to leave: first in twos, then in tens, then in a steady, trickling stream. The marble foyer, their impromptu campsite, is slowly cleared of cots and bedrolls. The kitchens stop cooking for a hundred instead of two. Suddenly, the ceaseless babel dims; and the house is too big, too empty, too silent.

Adrien turns fourteen in limbo, alone with his books and his unmade bed, with the antique piano shipped out from Paris for his and his mother's impromptu concerts. It’s still his room— _his_ room, not Chloe’s—and he has nothing better to do than sit by the window and watch the forest's shifting shadow.

Nobody dares to go deeper into the woods. 

Nobody, it seems, except his father. )

  


* * *

  


“Could I ask you something, Adrien?”

“Anything,” he says easily. Ladybug's face is cast in shadow, but he can see that her lips are pursed in thought. 

“How long have you been coming to the woods? The day we met couldn't have been the first time. And most people are too scared to explore after dark.”

It’s true that the forest feels different at night. Every leaf and twig is sharp-edged in the moonlight, stirred by a breeze that doesn't quite touch his skin. Fireflies flicker amidst the trees, and his lantern casts a spidery shadow across the winding, dwindling path.

But he’s safer in the woods than he is anywhere else. It’s safer here than in the empty house, where the air is thick with age-old grief; where the hours pass in constant fear of being hit and kicked and shoved and slapped. 

Above all else, he's safer with _her._

"I think I was fourteen the first time I snuck out here. My father was busy and I was bored, so I borrowed a book from his office and slipped the fence. I didn't go very far, just to the edge of the trees."

Ladybug tucks back a stray lock of hair, her fingers hovering near the gem in her ear.

"My parents were busy, too. I got into all kinds of trouble when they had their backs turned, though they could never stand to be too stern with me." She huffs a little laugh, her smile fond. "It's too bad I didn't have any siblings to play with."

"Me neither.” Adrien files the tidbit away, in the slowly growing collection of facts he knows about Ladybug’s secret life. "I have Chloe now, but that was before my father remarried. My mother had only just passed away."

"I'm sorry." 

"Don’t be. It happened years ago.” He ducks through a curtain of hanging moss, brushing it aside so that Ladybug can follow him. The deeper they travel into the woods, the harder it becomes to separate one tree from the next. Heirloom oaks as broad as he is tall prop up the night sky with their powerful branches. The ground is no longer dirt or leaves, but a woven carpet of their roots.

“I didn't know it was dangerous," he says, as his feet sink deep in the mossy earth. “I read until I was tired, and then I fell asleep. I woke up to what sounded like my mother calling my name.”

“That's what I've heard from the travellers I've rescued. My— friend says it's old magic, from before our grandparents were born.”

“It scared me stupid, if nothing else. I dropped all my things and ran for the house, looking back over my shoulder like a deer at a shot." Adrien shakes his head. It seems silly now. “I never owned up to where I'd been.” 

Ladybug slants a look at him from the corner of her eye, as though Adrien is a key and her thoughts are the lock.

"I can't believe you were brave enough to go back."

"I didn't have a choice. I had to find the book. My father was furious at me for losing it." Just _how_ furious is a memory he doesn't relish reliving. No matter what bruises he goes to bed with; no matter how often he’s hungry or cold; nothing makes him feel so helpless as the prospect of his father's anger.

“Now that I think of it, I couldn't even read it.” He comes to a stop at a break in the path, searching for a gap in the densely knit trees. “It had these pictures, people from different lands in all kinds of different costumes. But the text was a script I'd never seen."

“Curiouser and curiouser,” she answers wryly. "At least your first time wasn't as embarrassing as mine.”

Brushing past him on the narrow trail, Ladybug leads him into the dark. Her feet are deft and her steps are certain, as though she knows exactly where she's headed. Adrien lifts his lantern higher and follows her through the undergrowth, carefully tracing her footsteps with his own.

“Tell me about it. How old were you?”

"I was only thirteen,” she says, a little distantly. “My parents and I were on a trip outside the city, and I thought I was old enough to explore on my own. But the instant I left them behind, I got lost.”

" _You_ got lost?" says Adrien, laughing. "I find that hard to imagine, my lady.”

"I wandered around in circles for hours. Things might have turned out badly for me if Ti—" She pauses, then clears her throat deliberately. "Well, if someone hadn't found me and helped me."

The path finally ends in a tiny clearing, ringed by ferns and the trunks of fallen trees. Ladybug steps into the moonlit circle, her hair and cloak transforming to silver. When she turns back towards him, extending her hand, Adrien’s heartbeat leaps into his fingertips.

The texture of her glove is dry and smooth as her fingers wrap nimbly around his own. In one swift motion, she pulls him forward, tucking her elbow close to her side. 

Chest to chest, her face tipped up to his, their hands intertwined at the crook of her hip, Adrien simply stands there and _burns._

"It doesn't look like you need any help now.” 

His tongue is too heavy for the words he wants to speak.

“What I need and what I _want_ are two different things.” Her thumb glides gently over the ridge of his knuckles, her smile soft in the silver light. "I'm glad you stole that book from your father’s office, Adrien. I'm glad you came out here, and I'm glad that you found me.”

_I'm glad I found you, too._

Recklessly, he raises her hand to his lips and presses a kiss to the backs of her fingers. Her face darkens to match his own, and he grins, all teeth and giddy delight.

“Who am I to resist the charms of a lady as lovely as yourself?”

Something about her makes him bold. She brings out a different side of him altogether: a boy full of laughter and boundless warmth; a boy with the courage to wish for a _future_ ; boy unwarped by a lifetime of fear.

“Who, indeed,” she echoes softly; and something about it sounds like a promise, like a hundred summer days to come.

  


* * *

  


(Day after day, Adrien stays in the house, eating cold meals and re-reading his lessons. Night after night, he blows out his candle and pulls the curtains back from his bedroom window, watching Gabriel's hooded shadow vanish between the beckoning trees. 

_Bring him back safe_ , he begs the old forest. _Only bring him back safe, and I'll give you anything._

As the years go by and his father grows distant— colder and crueler and ever more contemptuous—he begins to believe that it heard his wish. )


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ladybug doesn't have those kinds of secrets—the kind that rot, like worms in old meat. When it comes to the day she decides to trust him, he'll gladly exchange her truths for his own.

Summer turns to autumn, and the visits don't stop. 

They're a shining constant in Adrien's life, an unspoken secret that he holds like a breath. It's so easy to speak to her, so easy to smile at her, so easy to see her when he closes his eyes at night. For the first time in _years_ , he has something to look forward to.

Most of his chances come at night, after the dinner service is cleared. There’s no kitchen staff besides the cook, so it takes him hours to get through the dishes—the china and glasses and the cutlery with filigree handles; as well as the dirtied pots and pans a scullery maid would usually handle.

He wipes down the tables, sweeps the dining room, and fetches hot coals for the brazier in Chloe's room. It should be Sabrina’s job, or Jean’s, but she’s started berating the staff to tears until Adrien attends to her instead. He's never certain if it's a curse or a compliment.

Once his stepsister is safely ensconced in the comfort of her silken sheets, he heads to the kitchen, puts on his boots, and lets himself out through the courtyard gate.

Most nights he walks alone beneath the rising moon. But sometimes—if he's lucky—the glow of his lantern finds a crimson flash in the silver wood. If she's there, she finds him. _I may be a little bit magic, myself._

Other days, she comes to the courtyard in the daytime. It's never when the rest of his family is home, and she’s always long gone by the time they return. He wonders if she keeps track of their comings and goings; and if so, whether she's noticed that he never leaves the house. 

It hardly matters that he doesn't know her name, or the details of her life when she's not at court. There are plenty of things Adrien keeps secret about himself. Like the fact that he doesn’t have a room, or a bed. Like the diagonal scar across his left temple, from when Lady Bourgeois struck him with the edge of a bronze paperweight. Like the night before Emilie Agreste’s funeral, when his father had smashed their bedroom to splinters while Adrien shook in the hallway outside.

Ladybug doesn't have those kinds of secrets—the kind that rot, like worms in old meat. When it comes to the day she decides to trust him, he'll gladly exchange her truths for his own.

And there are plenty of things he _does_ know about Ladybug. The way she looks with a smirk on her face and a competitive glint in her bright blue eyes. The way she laughs with her head thrown back until she doubles over, gasping, with her hands on her ribs. The way she studies the sky and the trees, her lips shaping silent calculations, before she leads them, unerringly, in the right direction. 

There are words he could put to what he knows, but Adrien doesn’t dare. Not yet.

  


* * *

  


"Oh Adrien, it was _monstrously_ crowded. Jean Luc took the carriage halfway around the square before he could find someplace to stop, can you imagine? And so many foreigners on the promenade! You'd think it was the winter circus."

"It sounds awful, Chloe," he answers vaguely. 

“It’s ridiculous, is what it is.” If his stepsister notices his distraction, she's too preoccupied herself to comment. “The King should have done something about these attacks by now. There’s more commoners showing up at the palace every week.”

Adrien doesn’t bother to respond. Taking stock of the brightly colored boxes heaped on every available surface, he double-checks that his hands are clean before mounting his assault on Chloe’s wardrobe.

The feather-down bed is almost invisible beneath heaps of discarded dresses, each with the full skirts and plunging neckline popularized by King Dupain's court. Silk is in fashion, thanks to the Queen Consort, and embroidered brocade is the look of the season. Chloe's outfit is a voluminous golden gown with fluted sleeves and an hourglass waist, a slightly darker shade than her hair. 

"Sabrina, where's my velvet capelet? Why wasn't it laid out last night? What's the use of having you here if you can't keep my belongings clear of your own backside?”

"I'm sorry, Mademoiselle Bourgeois! I'll have it for you in just a—"

"It's here, Chlo," Adrien mumbles. He winces internally as Chloe beams and motions for him to fix it around her shoulders. It's hard to miss Sabrina's glare in his direction, as though he's somehow vying for his stepsister's favor.

He's tried and failed to befriend the staff more often than he cares to recall. There's an unspoken hierarchy among the servants of the house, dictating a hundred petty matters—who gets to say good morning to who, who gets to sleep the closest to the stove, who gets to take home dented silver or candles burnt to half their wick. No one seems to know where Adrien fits; and with Lady Bourgeois’ most recent layoffs, no one has friendly looks to spare. 

He ties the cape beneath Chloe's chin and swiftly excuses himself. Sabrina pounces on her hair, and Adrien takes advantage of the hubbub to escape out the door of Chloe's bedroom. 

Just as he reaches the end of the hallway, a gloved hand clamps around his wrist.

"Where do you think you're going, child?"

His throat grows taut at the snap in his stepmother's voice.

Adrien turns to face her slowly, making no effort to free his wrist from her grasp.

Chloe's mother is a beautiful woman: slim in stature, an elfin cast to her prim features. Her auburn hair is curled at chin length, and her dress is cut from airy white silk. Looking at her, he never would have guessed her capable of such uncommon cruelty. 

"I’m going down to the courtyard, madame," he says quietly. "Jean asked for help preparing the coach."

Her grip tightens, hard enough to bruise. Adrien can't contain his flinch. 

"The cook says you left in the middle of dinner yesterday. Skulking off with your pockets full of crusts like an urchin. He had to ask my daughter's maid to assist him."

"I'm sorry, Lady Bourgeois. I went to get firewood."

"I didn't ask for your petty excuses." She releases his wrist, and he resists the urge to cradle it. "Don't think you can disrespect me because your father isn't here. I have my place in this household, as _you_ have yours."

Adrien knows better than to contest her. His stepmother never misses an opportunity to escalate, and more often than not their encounters end with her handprint stamped across his cheek; her ring drawing blood from his broken lip. 

_The ring my father gave her_ , he thinks bitterly, and drops his gaze to the polished floorboards.

“I'm sorry,” he repeats. “It won't happen again.”

“See that it doesn't,” she answers coolly. “The forest is a dangerous place, Adrien. No one wants to see you end up like your mother.”

It’s an old jab, but no less effective, twisting between his ribs and into his gut like a knife in search of his softest parts. Adrien stares at his stepmother's feet and wills himself not to react. If she thinks she can hurt him, she won't stop until he breaks like glass.

“Mother, you look lovely! That hat truly suits you.” Chloe emerges from her bedroom doorway, Sabrina following close behind. “Let's go already, or we’ll miss the opening act. I don’t trust those idiots to keep our seats warmed.”

Chloe’s tone is petulant as always, but her eyes are anxious as she takes her mother's elbow and attempts to steer her down the stairs. 

For a moment, Lady Bourgeois resists. But Adrien must look sufficiently cowed, because she turns her back with a haughty shrug and minces down the marble staircase. Chloe follows, Sabrina scurrying after with the train of her habit held in both hands.

Adrien waits for the click of their heels to fade from the tiled gallery downstairs. His heart pounds like bottled thunder, and sweat slicks his hair to the nape of his neck. Once he’s certain that they’ve gone, he hurries back towards Chloe’s room, letting himself in through the unlocked doors and shutting them behind him with a loud click. 

Heartbeat by heartbeat, his pulse stops racing, and he draws a deep breath from between his laced fingers.

The room looks so different to when it was his—an ocean of things crammed in too small a space, all garish dyes and expensive effects. Feathered hats and quilted petticoats are strewn across the chaise and the mirrored table. Most of the furniture has been replaced, the piano and bookshelves sold to make space for an expansive closet and a four-poster bed.

There’s no sign it once belonged to a fourteen-year-old boy—no sign that Adrien was here at all.

From the third-story window overlooking the woods, he watches the coach disappear into the distance, winding down the road and over the horizon in a speck of brightest, coldest gold.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "In two weeks," says Ladybug, "Princess Marinette Dupain-Cheng is hosting a ball for her seventeenth birthday. Suitors from all over France will attend in the hope of winning her hand. At the princess's request, the ball is a masquerade. If she gives away her heart, it's to be on grounds of character, not for the sake of riches or titles or blood.”
> 
> Hands jittery with anticipation, Adrien accepts the envelope. Its edges are lined in gilt filigree, and the flap is sealed with scarlet wax.

By nightfall, the fingerprints encircling his wrist have darkened into a mottled bracelet. Adrien curls up in the empty hearth and listens to the sounds of the house going to sleep. By the time he gets up to fetch his cloak, hiding his bruises with layers of long sleeves, it's almost midnight. 

He finds the forest soaked in mist, the subtle blues and violets of twilight given way to a dark so deep it bleeds. It’s a rare ease that finds him in the shadow of the trees, on the trails he’s walked with Ladybug so often.

It's the only time he can truly _breathe_ , the only thing in his life that feels a little like freedom.

He usually senses Ladybug a second before he sees her. Perhaps she's trying not to startle him, or perhaps he’s simply attuned to her presence. This time, however, she materializes without warning, grasping his arm and pulling him into the thicket.

Months from their first meeting, her touch no longer startles him, but the hitch in his breath and the hike in his pulse are the same as the first time she'd taken his hand. The brush of her fingers lights up a live wire from the back of his neck to the base of his spine, and all he can feel is the heat of her body as she tugs him towards her, her eyes intent.

Adrien opens his mouth to say—something, anything, _god, anything at all_ —but stops as she shakes her head, tapping two fingers to his lips.

He puts out his lantern, plunging them both into the shadows. Ladybug’s face is scant inches from his own, though he can’t read her features in the silvered darkness. In the silence that follows, his eyes flutter shut to the _thump thump thump_ of his stumbling heart.

Then a crash rings out through the forest air, and a familiar figure stumbles into the clearing, littered with dead leaves and sniffling loudly.

Ladybug stiffens beside him, while Adrien simply stares.

“ _Chloe?_ ” His disbelief at the sight of his stepsister is rapidly replaced by horror. _God,_ how had he let her follow him? How could he possibly be so _stupid?_

Frantically, Adrien retraces his steps. Chloe was in bed when he started his evening chores. The remaining servants had all gone to sleep, retiring to their respective quarters. And he _knows_ he was careful leaving the chateau, since his stepmother’s warning had set him on edge. Not only had Chloe evaded his notice, she’d chosen to do so on one of the rare nights that Ladybug is actually _here_ , with _him._

How can anyone be _this_ unlucky?

“Hello?” Stripped of the finery she wears like armor, his sister looks unusually fragile. “Adrikins? Are you here?”

Chloe is dressed in a goosefeather cloak and soft cloth slippers with ribbon laces. In her hand is a lantern like Adrien's own, with a wooden shutter to dim its light. She looks out of place in every possible way, her hair full of twigs from the surrounding branches and her shoes caked black with streambed mud.

“I—I know you're out here! You'd better come out if you know what's good for you.” 

Mortified, Adrien sinks into the bushes, his ears burning with humiliation.

He can already picture his stepmother's reaction—his _father's_ reaction—if they were to discover his nightly walks; let alone if they were to learn he'd been meeting someone, talking to someone, spending hours and hours alone with _a member of the king's court._ The beating he'd get is bad enough, but the thought of losing Ladybug for good saps the strength from his legs and the air from his lungs.

He can't stop seeing her. He can't be completely and utterly alone, _again._

He squeezes his eyes shut and fights to calm his breathing. She must sense his panic, close as she is—close enough to breathe in the scent that always trails her, like smoke and spices and summer rain; close enough to register her worried gaze, and the reassuring squeeze she gives his hand.

“Adrien, come _on_ , you’re being ridiculous. It's dark and slimy and horrible out here.” Chloe sounds increasingly uneasy, an edge of panic entering her voice. “You’re really just going to leave me out here? I don’t—I don’t know how to get back to the house.”

Heart sinking in resignation, Adrien folds and gets to his feet. 

"Adrikins!" she shrieks as he steps into the clearing. She latches onto his arm in seconds, eyes wet and lip wobbling. It would almost be pitiable if he wasn't so furious. 

“Chloe,” he hisses, “what are you _doing_ here?”

Chloe looks stung, but she rallies quickly. “What am I doing? What are _you_ doing? Do you want my mother to be furious with you? Did you think for one second about what would happen when she goes to your father about what you've been up to, and they both come back here to smack you stupid?"

Adrien recoils, and she stops, her mouth twisting. The expression on her face might almost be remorse, but he can't summon the will to care. 

Ladybug is here.

Ladybug _heard_ that. 

Shame and embarrassment well up like bile in the hollow cavity of Adrien's chest, curdling into something rank. 

“She can't be angry if she doesn't find out," he says flatly. The rage has gone out of him, leaving only hurt behind.

“If she doesn’t _find out?_ ” Chloe increases in volume and pitch, as though drowning him out is the way to convince him. “God, Adrien, even I knew you were up to something. Why have you been acting so strange? You know she wouldn't hate you so much if you listened for _once_ and did as you were told!"

“No, Chlo, I don’t know that. And even if I did, I wouldn’t care.”

Clearly taken aback by his tone, she wavers. Her hands form fists at the hem of her cloak, as though she’s aching to grab him and shake him into submission. Instead, she seethes in impotent silence while Adrien fumbles with his lantern, filling the space between them with a harsh flood of light.

“Come on, Chloe. I’ll take you home.”

She shakes her head sharply, as though clearing the air, and when she speaks again, her voice is firm.

“Answer me, Adrien. At least tell me why it’s worth it. What’s so important that you have to sneak around like a petty thief in the middle of the night?”

“ _I_ am.”

Chloe leaps backwards with a banshee shriek. Dropping her lantern, she skitters around behind him, putting his body between herself and Ladybug as the latter stalks forward like a crimson ghost.

Never, in all his months of knowing her, has he seen her face so cold with contempt.

His stomach drops and his chest seizes painfully, until Ladybug looks past him and meets Chloe’s gaze. 

His stepsister freezes, painted eyes wide. Her mouth contorts around soundless words before falling open in a gape of recognition. Steeling himself for the inevitable fallout, Adrien braces for the lash of her tongue, for the stream of abuse to flow from her lips.

It doesn’t come.

“Mademoiselle,” Chloe squeaks. Her face is white as chalk. “I had no idea—I mean, what an honor, to finally meet you in person.” She drops into a shaky approximation of a curtsey, fanning out her nightdress like the skirts of a gown. “Please forgive my brother, he’s never been to court. If he’s overstepped, if he’s done anything to offend you at all, I take full responsibility.”

_What?_

“He’s not the one who’s offended me,” Ladybug replies coldly. To Adrien's astonishment, Chloe cringes. He's never seen anyone but the Lady Bourgeois successfully put her in her place.

Hesitantly, he steps away from his sister and sets a soft hand on Ladybug's shoulder. "My lady, it's alright. Let's go back to the chateau. We'll talk once my sister is safely at home."

With a tight little smile, she turns to face him. It only lasts an instant before it crumples altogether, and she pulls him into a crushing embrace. 

It's real and raw and perfect and _right,_ and Ladybug is warmer against him than sunlight. She folds into his arms as though he's holding her together, as though she can pour herself into him through the conduit of their skin. Adrien can do nothing but shudder in response, staying upright through the force of her gravity alone, and his bitten-back sigh is nearly a sob as she buries her face in the crook of his neck. 

It's so damning, so _desperate_ , but he needs her hands on him. He needs, needs, _needs_ it, like he needs the open sky.

Chloe’s laugh is high and nervous. As Adrien turns toward her, gathering his scattered wits, she plasters a smile across her face and crashes into the undergrowth like a spooked rabbit. 

There's nothing he can do but groan, and follow.

  


* * *

  


No one speaks as they return to the chateau. Chloe sneaks glances when she thinks he isn't looking, her hunched shoulders and pinched expression equal parts guilt and irritation. At least one part of what she's thinking is written clear as day on her face. 

Adrien knows Chloe better than she knows herself— how to cheer her up when her mother makes her cry; how to fetch her hot tea when she wakes from a nightmare; how to tell when to coax her and when to keep his distance. He knows what he is to her: a boy who doesn’t argue, who doesn’t seethe or sulk or snap. Adrien doesn't _want_ things, and when he does, he wants quietly. It's how he's learned to survive all these years—by whittling away his edges and corners like granite being smoothed to glass by the sea.

He can tell it scares her, that he's kept secrets from her, that he has the power to feel things not in her favor.

He lets them in through the kitchen door, and she stumbles up the staircase without a word. Adrien and Ladybug are left alone downstairs, in the sterile marble foyer where his father entertains.

"I've never seen the rest of your house," she says softly. Adrien lets out a laugh, but the sound is choked and small.

She steps forward unbidden, touching his shoulder as he'd touched hers. Her fingers curl around to brush the back of his neck, and her thumb comes to rest in the bend of his collarbone. She touches him so easily now; and he aches to turn his cheek into the flat of her palm, press his lips to the part in her sleek black hair, become small and yielding in the cage of her arms. 

“I'm sorry about Chloe,” he says instead.

Her answering smile is unusually sombre. 

"I’d hoped to get to spend more time with you tonight. I'm needed at the palace for the foreseeable future, and it'll be awhile before I can return to visit."

The words plummet down into the pit of his stomach, settling in his belly like so many stones. But all he says is, "How long is a while?"

Ladybug’s smile turns broken and soft, her hand on his shoulder an anchoring weight.

“Is what your sister said to you true? You’d get in trouble for talking to me?”

Adrien opens his mouth to deflect, but finds his denial lodged in his throat. If their unlikely courtship is coming to a close, he can't stand to end these golden, _glorious_ months with the memory of lying to Ladybug's face.

“I'm always in trouble for one thing or another,” he mumbles. “Please, my lady, just forget she said anything.”

Even as he says it, he knows it's a lost cause. Ladybug’s jaw is stubbornly clenched, and her eyes flash blue fire from behind her mask.

“I could petition His Majesty to place you under my protection.”

“My father will send me away, and I’ll be worse off than before. You’ll have made an enemy at court for nothing.”

“For _nothing?_ ” she echoes, her voice full of heat; and he’s helpless to respond as she drops her hand downwards, tracing his forearm from elbow to wrist.

It pauses just above where his stepmother grabbed him, the unsightly swelling covered up by his sleeve. Taking his hand in both of her own, she looks up with an intensity that leaves him lightheaded.

"The truth is, Adrien, I came to ask you to come to Paris." She swallows, eyes darting to his and then away. "I want to see you more often than this. All the time, if I can. I want you to be with me."

Time slows down to a sticky press as Adrien stares in disbelief, barely daring to trust his own ears. His heartbeat hammers _loud, loud, loud,_ and the dizzying whiplash to hot, aching _hope_ makes his lungs grow tight with the effort of breathing. Ladybug studies him, her expression anxious, but there’s no uncertainty in her face. 

The world narrows down to the space between their lips, the electric contact between her hands and his, the terrible gentleness of her fingers against his bruises, as though she knows, as though she knows _everything,_ as though she feels his flesh as her own. 

_I want you to be with me._

_All the time, if I can._

"I—" He pauses, his throat working nervously, a thousand unworthy words offered and swallowed. "I want that, more than anything."

 _Want_ isn't a strong enough word for what he feels. It feels like a longing so powerful it chokes him, ripping his chest asunder as it seeks the open air. It feels like his blood running quick through his veins and his fingertips humming with invisible sparks. It feels like drawing breath after years of drowning, like the shape of something shining just within his grasp—to be wanted. To be needed. To be adored, by _her._

_I want you to be with me._

He can't. He knows that. He doesn’t know who she _is._

He can’t be this stupid, this _selfish_ , he—

 _—can’t_ , any more than he can forget his own name. Not with her standing there, close enough to kiss, close enough to hug her to his aching, aching chest, to tangle greedy fingers in her loosely curling hair. Not with her touching him, looking at him like _that_ ; her eyes warm with yearning and a deep, tender hope. 

"I want to," he whispers, and prays that it's enough. 

Ladybug withdraws her left hand into her cloak, her right still clasped around his own. As Adrien watches, his heart in his throat, she produces a heavy parchment envelope. At once, he recognizes the elaborate insignia that winks at him from the creamy paper: the sovereign seal of the Dupain-Cheng court, marking a consignment from the royal family.

"In two weeks," says Ladybug, "Princess Marinette Dupain-Cheng is hosting a ball for her seventeenth birthday. Suitors from all over France will attend in the hope of winning her hand. At the princess's request, the ball is a masquerade. If she gives away her heart, it's to be on grounds of character, not for the sake of riches or titles or blood.”

Hands jittery with anticipation, Adrien accepts the envelope. Its edges are lined in gilt filigree, and the flap is sealed with scarlet wax.

“That invitation will get you through the gates and anywhere within the palace grounds. I’ll be there, albeit in a different mask than usual.”

“How will I recognize you, if everyone is in costume?”

She squeezes his palm, a silent request for permission. Tucking the envelope into his coat, Adrien rolls back his soot-stained sleeve and nervously averts his gaze.

Ladybug doesn’t flinch at the sight of his bruises, though her jaw locks in minute distress. Without letting her eyes linger, she reaches into her pouch—the one where she usually keeps scraps of pastry—and produces something small and colorful. She ties it around his injured wrist, her fingers gentle where they brush his skin.

It's a length of red thread strung with colorful beads, braided and knotted like a child's bracelet. The beads are shaped from clay rather than gold or coral or jade, and the bracelet looks worn, as though she’s carried it for years. He holds it reverently nonetheless, tracing the carved flower that serves as its centerpiece. 

"From a lady to her knight," she says with a smile, and a helpless sort of fondness that makes him quake where he stands. "Wear that on your wrist, and I'll be able to find you."

It's a token more precious than any stone or trinket—a favor from the girl behind Ladybug's mask; the girl he would be _meeting_ in less than a fortnight. 

"I'll give it back to you when I see you," he says fervently. 

“Keep it. You need all the luck you can get." She relinquishes his hands and takes a reluctant step back. "Come to court, Adrien, and I can protect you. You don’t know who I am yet, but you can trust me.”

“I'll always trust you,” he replies, and is rewarded by the crinkle at the corner of her eyes. If Adrien has _ever_ had the power to refuse her—if he’s ever had the _semblance_ of a _scrap_ of resistance—he'd give it up gladly just to keep those eyes on him another second, another minute, another lifetime and a half.

Ladybug starts to speak, but stutters. Her face flushed pink with flustered pleasure, she cups her mouth and starts again, her smile widening to a shy little grin that splits her lips and dimples her cheeks. 

“I'll see you in two weeks, then. At the princess's ball.”

Adrien presses his palm to the breast of his coat, where the letter sits nestled like a beating heart.

“My lady,” he whispers, “I wouldn't miss it for the world.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Oh, Adrikins," Chloe says flatly. " _You_ might not be keeping tabs, but the world doesn’t work like it does in your stories. Do you have the first idea of how to do anything that isn't steeping tea and stoking fires? Were you planning to get by like a servant your whole life? A girl like Ladybug can have anyone she wants, so if you want her to stick around, you'd better admit you need my help.”

The second he wakes the following morning, Adrien reaches for Ladybug's bracelet. 

The sun is still an hour from rising, and the empty kitchen is black as pitch. He finds it quickly nonetheless, turning it over and over in his fingers, rubbing the calloused pad of his thumb over each knot, each bead, each flake of paint. 

It’s certain proof that his memory is true. Without it, Adrien would readily believe that Ladybug’s confession was a golden dream; that the warmth in her eyes was a fleeting fancy; that her parting kiss to the corner of his mouth was a fantasy beyond his wildest imagination. 

It's a foreign feeling, getting up to start the day with heated cheeks and cloudborne feet. Now that it’s autumn, the chill is inescapable, but even the cold that chases his footsteps can’t dim the budding warmth in his chest.

In two weeks, he could put this house behind him. He could have a life of his own in Paris—could go where he wished and do as he pleased, study and work, make actual _friends_ , forget what it felt like to wake up uncertain of anything but hunger and misery and pain.

In two weeks, he could be _hers._

(Hers, hers, _hers_ in every sense of the word—in stolen kisses and sweet, stuttered phrases; in tangled sheets and tangled legs; in his arm around her shoulders, their footsteps through the rain, her laugh her laugh her _laugh_ beneath the streetlights by the Seine.) 

Adrien ties the bracelet more securely around his wrist, tugging down his sleeve to hide it from sight. 

It feels like a flipped page in one of his mother's stories—like the moment things change, and his luck begins to turn.  
  


* * *

  
  
He isn’t surprised when he returns from the wood pile to find his sister in the still-empty kitchen. She's dressed in her nightgown from yesterday evening, a robe thrown crookedly over her shoulders, her blonde hair loose in an unbrushed cascade. He sees the moment she opens her mouth to chew him out for taking his time—and the moment it clicks shut, pinching in discomfort.

"Hurry up and light the fire,” she mutters. “It’s freezing cold and I want my tea.”

“Good morning to you too,” he answers dryly, setting down his load by the kitchen stove. “Go back to your room where it’s warm, Chloe. I’ll bring it up for you in a minute.”

Chloe looks like she’s about to burst. He knows he’s simply delaying the inevitable, but he’d hoped to have at least until breakfast to figure out how to buy her silence. 

Clearly, Chloe has no such intention, because she folds her arms and leans against the stove with the air of a snake settling down to watch a rat hole.

“Adrikins, how long has this been going on?”

He takes his time answering, falling back on the pretense of sweeping the hearth and stacking the new wood. He usually prepares the fires at night, but he’d been trying to keep his distance from the cook ever since she ratted him out about leaving the house. 

“It’s not like we’ve talked that much,” he lies. “She’s one of the king’s rangers, not anyone unsavory. She’s stopped by the house a few times on patrol.”

Chloe lets out a dismissive snort. “The Hero of Paris doesn’t _stop by_ for anyone. Just how dumb do you think I am?”

Adrien stops, and Chloe pounces at the sight of his confusion like a cat at the sight of a wounded mouse. 

"Wait, no, oh my _god._ You're telling me you have no idea? All this time you’ve been sneaking around the woods because you’re ass over teakettle at the sight of her face, and you don't know who the hell she _is_?”

“She’s Ladybug,” he mutters, setting aside the dustpan of ashes. “At least, that’s what she told me to call her.”

“Of course she’s _Ladybug_ , you blind idiot! She’s the King’s huntress! Protector of the throne! Savior of Paris and first defense against the akuma!” Chloe pinches the bridge of her nose and tips her head back, inhaling sharply. "God, Adrien, for all that Mother says about you, I never _actually_ thought you were stupid."

Adrien scans her face through the screen of his bangs, searching for any hint of mockery. Noticing his expression, Chloe groans. 

“What? You think I'm lying? She’s the talk of the entire court. Nobody knows who she is, or where she goes when she’s not at the palace. And you wouldn't believe some of the rumors I've heard.”

“Like what?” he asks, with more than a touch of wariness. He’s found that rumors are rarely kind.

“I mean, people say she’s an actual witch.” Chloe drops her voice to a conspiratory whisper. “They say she can outrun a galloping horse, and shoot a fly out of the air at thirty paces, and heal people’s wounds with nothing but her hands.”

Adrien takes this in in silence. The Ladybug he knows has never seemed so mythical, wrapped as she is in a weave of fond memories: scrunching her nose in concentration as she draws back the string of her mighty bow; grumbling under her breath over unpegged laundry; leaning against his shoulder with his hands in her lap as they sit in the lemon tree’s sweet-smelling shade. But it’s true that she’s always seemed immovable—not like the moon, or a distant mountain; but like the sunlight, undimmed by anything it touches.

He thinks, then, of the day he met her; when the head wound that had knocked her unconscious vanished the moment she woke in his arms.

He thinks of the hours-long journey from the city, and how she covers it on foot in the space of a swallow’s wingbeat. 

He thinks of the way she always comes on the nights when he expects her least—the nights when his clothes hide bloody welts; the nights when exhaustion fills him like fog; the nights when he’s well and truly lost in a forest so vast it could swallow the sea, let alone a single aching body. 

And yet she always, _always_ finds him.

“Oh,” says Adrien, very faintly.

“Oh?” says Chloe. “That’s all you have to say?”

It takes all he has to wrangle words through the incandescent wonder in his chest. 

“I guess she’s even more amazing than I thought.”

Chloe makes a noise in the back of her throat that’s simultaneously disgusted and pained. “ _Ugh,_ I don’t know why I even bothered.”

Setting aside his newfound knowledge to be better examined at another time—in slow, indulgently smitten detail—Adrien wipes his hands on his trousers and reaches for the flint and steel.

“You know, that’s a good question.” With the first spark, the kindling catches, a tongue of flame licking up the dried twigs to tease at the base of his pile of logs. “Why _did_ you bother, Chloe? You’ve never been concerned with where I go or what I do. Why should it be different now that I’m friends with the Hero of Paris?”

"Oh, Adrikins," Chloe says flatly. " _You_ might not be keeping tabs, but the world doesn’t work like it does in your stories. Do you have the first idea of how to do anything that isn't steeping tea and stoking fires? Were you planning to get by like a servant your whole life? A girl like Ladybug can have anyone she wants, so if you want her to stick around, you'd better admit you need my help.”

"Is that why you followed me? Because you were _helping_?" 

He almost regrets it when Chloe’s face falls. He cares for his sister—truly, he does—and the last thing he needs, especially right now, is to invite her ill will. 

Adrien takes a deep, steadying breath. Then he closes the fireplace grate and gets to his feet, palms spread in a conciliatory gesture. 

“I’m sorry, Chloe, that was unkind. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way.”

“Oh, shut _up_ ,” she snaps, her words devoid of real venom. “You know I hate it when you talk to me the way you always talk to my mother.”

Adrien elects to keep his silence. Chloe shifts from foot to foot, scrubbing at her face with the heel of her hand.

“She’s cruel to me too, you know. I'm nothing like her.”

“I know,” he says. The words ring empty to his own ears, but they seem to bring his sister comfort. Sniffing wetly, she dabs her eyes dry and shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her robe.

“You were right, actually,” he continues gently. “There is something I could use your help with.”

Chloe sniffs again, but her breathing has evened, and the red-rimmed gaze she levels in his direction is nothing short of calculating. 

“Fine,” she says curtly. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll have it sent for.”

Gathering his courage, Adrien lifts his chin and raises his eyes to Chloe’s without balking. He clasps the outline of the bracelet beneath his sleeve, praying that some of its luck will find him. 

“I need some clothes for a formal event. And I need to hire a carriage without our parents finding out.”

“When?”

“In two weeks’ time.”

“Two weeks?” Chloe repeats. “There’s only one event taking place at the palace in two weeks. It took me _months_ to get an invitation. How the hell did you—” 

She breathes an incredulous little laugh. “Of _course_ she’d ask you. Of course she wants you at court. Of course you’d win over the _Hero of Paris_ without trying, or ever noticing anything around you. It’s always been so easy for you.”

Adrien can't begin to unravel the sheer lunacy of that statement. Chloe doesn't work from dawn to dusk and sleep on the ground by the hearth to stay warm. Chloe has never been locked in the cellar until she lost track of time for days on end. Chloe has never starved, has never been struck.

But Chloe is deeply, desperately lonely, and of all the pains that Adrien has suffered, that one causes the deepest cut. 

“Chloe, come on. It's just one party.” He places a tentative hand on her shoulder. “You know so much more about this kind of thing than me. By next year you’ll have them wrapped around your little finger, and any boy or girl you want besides.”

“I know you’re sucking up to make me feel better, Adrikins.” Chloe condescends to lean into his side, her body relaxing as he wraps his arm around her. “But I guess I can help you just this once. You ought not to make a _complete_ fool of yourself, though you’ve clearly gotten a head start without me.”

Rolling his eyes towards the kitchen ceiling, Adrien bites his tongue and nods.  
  


* * *

  
  
Days pass, and his anticipation grows until he thinks he might split like an unstitched seam. 

Years of bad luck and bleak disappointment have taught him to keep his hopes in check, but he finds it impossible to rein himself in. As the night of the ball comes closer and closer, his excitement builds to a fever pitch, crackling around him in a static cloud as he flies through the hallways of the empty house.

He stops visiting the woods at night. There’s no point risking it while Ladybug is at court, especially with Chloe keeping his secrets. Instead, he performs his best attempt at mind-reading, anticipating his stepmother’s every order before it leaves her sneering lips. He's meek, respectful, unerringly obedient; rising at dawn still covered in cinders to start the day’s work before the rest of the household wakes. 

He can't afford their anger now, not when he's _this close_ to getting away.

(To being _free._ )

Still, it’s hard not to court temptation. With fall giving way to the first notes of winter, it's harder and harder to stay confined to the chateau. The enormous rooms are impossible to keep warm, even with the fireplace raging, and the marble floors are icy to the touch. Adrien wraps his face in scarves and stuffs his coat and boots with rags, but the cold dogs him no matter where he goes, nipping his nose and the tips of his fingers.

He can see further into the forest now. The trees are nearly bare, having shed their autumn splendor to don their skeletal winter dress. As much as he yearns to slip away, Adrien stays put on his own side of the fence. 

One early morning just after sunrise, he's at the well filling buckets for the tank near the house. It's freezing, dew still thick on the ground, with a northerly wind that bites straight through his coat. He takes a moment to massage his numb fingers and rewrap his scarf to cover his face. 

In the forest, shining from the shadows between the trees, are two enormous emerald eyes.

Adrien jumps six inches out of his skin, his empty bucket clattering to the ground. He scrambles to stop it before it rolls past the gate, dropping to his knees and grabbing it to his chest. By the time he stands and looks again, the woods are empty, and the creature— _being_ —has vanished like smoke.  
  


* * *

  


  
To his surprise, Chloe comes through on her promise. And so it comes to pass that three days before the ball, he finds himself standing in front of her boudoir mirror, wearing an ensemble worth its weight in gold.

“I guess that's not completely terrible.” Chloe purses her lips at his reflection. “I mean, not that it could be, since I did it. But who knew you had assets under all that soot? Some might even say you were handsome.”

It's been a long time since Adrien looked at himself. At times he still feels like the frowning boy in the portrait hung by his father's desk: back bowed beneath a heavy hand, eyes wide and uncomprehending. But he's seventeen now, and no longer a child. The green silk jacket tapers at the waist to show off the newfound width of his shoulders, and his legs are lengthened by slim pants and heeled boots. His unruly hair is styled with pomade and neatly slicked behind his ears. His features have sharpened, but he still has his mother's eyes.

“They fit well,” he says. “This set must have cost a fortune.”

Chloe’s shrug is pointedly nonchalant. 

“They were my père’s, though he was a fair bit bigger than you. I had to ask Sabrina to take them in. They’ve been collecting dust ever since he died, but don't let my mother see you in them.” 

She picks up a jewelry box of gold and silver pieces, sliding a ring onto Adrien’s left hand. Clearly made with extravagance in mind, its center stone is a gaudy emerald, set in pale gold and finished to a high polish. 

“You’ll need a touch of sparkle to stand out at the ball. No point having money if you can’t wear it, right? But this is actually worth something, so make sure you bring it back.”

Adrien nods dutifully, slipping the ring off his finger and tucking it into the pocket of his discarded coat. "Thank you, Chloe. You don't know how much this means to me."

Chloe is quiet, toying absentmindedly with the pearl necklace around her throat. She seems so much older when she's standing still, when that strange seriousness crosses her face. 

"When you see her, you'll tell her I helped you, won't you? You'll tell her I'm not the one who hurt you." 

Before Adrien can answer, there's a knock on the bedroom door. Sabrina enters and bobs a brief curtsey. She takes him in with measured distaste, as though he's a stubborn stain or a particularly ugly coat rack, but makes no comment on his borrowed finery. 

"Mademoiselle, your mother expects you for dinner at the high table tomorrow evening. You too," she adds, addressing Adrien without looking at him. "As you know, her Highness' ball is in three days, and your comportment is of utmost importance. She wishes to discuss it with the entire family present."

“My mother is well aware I don’t need to be reminded.” Chloe’s face sours, along with her tone. “And why does Adrikins need to be there? It's not like he’s ever cared about politics.” 

"That," says Sabrina, "will be for his father to decide, upon his return from Paris tomorrow."

The base plummets out of Adrien’s gut, to be joined by his stomach in the depths of the ground. In its wake comes a cresting wave of dread, clawing up his throat in the absence of air. Chloe is speaking, a dim buzz in the shell of his ear; but she may as well be on the other side of the ocean, for all that he can hear or understand her. 

"I thought he was supposed to be at the palace til midwinter."

His voice trails off in a gutted little rasp. He realizes too late that he's cut Chloe off, speaking over the end of her sentence without taking in a single word. 

Sabrina looks at him with pity. "I don't presume to know Monsieur Agreste’s business. You can ask him yourself when you see him at dinner. Will there be anything else?”

“You’re dismissed, Sabrina,” Chloe says abruptly. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Sabrina bobs another curtsey and departs. The second her footsteps fade into the distance, Chloe whirls on him with a hiss, clawing at his embroidered lapels. 

"I can't believe you let her see you. Take that off now, I can't have her snitching." 

“I thought you asked her to tailor the clothes.”

“I'm not stupid, Adrien, I didn't tell her it was for _you._ And if your father asks, I don't know about it, alright? I don't know anything about you going to the ball. You stole the clothes from a chest in the attic."

She rips the jacket off and makes a clumsy attempt to fold it, spitting in frustration as it slips from her fingers. Numbly, Adrien takes it from her, creasing the seams and smoothing the collar with an ease born of long practice. 

“Adrikins, did you hear me? I’m serious. I’ll deny it.”

"Right." Redressing quickly and swallowing the lump in his throat, he stacks the outfit on Chloe’s bedspread.

“I’m glad we understand each other. Now don’t just _stand_ there, take those back to your room and hide them." Chewing her knuckles in agitation, Chloe jerks a finger towards the bedroom door. "Or, or to the kitchen, or wherever it is that you sleep at night. Go on. _Get out._ ”

And just like that, Adrien is standing in the hallway, the incriminating weight of the embroidered silk as heavy as a millstone around his neck.

Just like that, he’s backing away towards the staircase, watching as Chloe slams her door with a force that rattles its oiled hinges. 

Just like _that,_ his bad luck is back, alive and well like it never left.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knows that Marinette is as close to her father as she is to her mother; that she’s good at games and bad at lying; that she’d spent three weeks barely eating or sleeping in order to sew her debutante dress. He knows that she’s stubborn and fierce and impulsive, full of fears and flaws that she never let show at court. He’s often wondered what the princess would think, to see her secrets spilled out to a stranger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up for physical and verbal violence.

The evening of his father's return, Adrien joins Chloe and Lady Bourgeois beneath a makeshift canopy in the inner courtyard. They stand together in suffocating silence, watching the rain turn the garden into a sinkhole and the road to a river of soupy mud. Adrien’s cloak is ill suited to wet weather, and the clamminess of his skin is more than mere cold. Minutes into the wait, he's shivering, but he keeps his eyes fixed on the cobblestone driveway leading up to the estate gates. 

The bracelet burns around his wrist, concealed by layers of sheepskin and wool. 

It's almost an hour before the _clip-clop_ of horseshoes announces the approach of a distant carriage. Adrien swallows, copper and salt, his ribcage constricting around his lungs. Beside him, Chloe fidgets uneasily. Only his stepmother is unaffected, pristine in pale silk and a French lace neckline, her painted mouth a lurid slash on the canvas of her powdered face. 

Jean and Sabrina rush forward to assist as the carriage creaks to a stop by the gate. Adrien abandons his attempts to breathe. 

Four years later, his father looks the same. Same gaunt cheeks and wiry hair; same sharp nose and downturned mouth. He steps out of the carriage with the precision of a tin soldier, greeting Lady Bourgeois with a kiss on each cheek. Straightening to his full height, a starkly cut figure against the swiftly darkening sky, he somehow seems like a doppelganger of himself—like one of the ghosts that wander the old wood, a perfect husk devoid of warm blood. 

Gabriel Agreste steps through the archway, neatly avoiding the puddles underfoot. His eyes—same eyes, framed by fine silver lenses—rove across the courtyard with an air of disinterest.

“Welcome back, Monsieur Agreste,” says Chloe stiffly. 

Adrien feels like he’s about to choke. 

Gabriel’s gaze falls upon him expectantly, though his dim expression doesn’t shift. 

“Good evening, père,” he says at last, in a reedy whisper that sounds nothing like what he practiced. He doubts his father can even hear him over the din of the pouring rain, but he can’t summon the strength for a second attempt. 

His father acknowledges them both with a nod.

“Hello, Adrien. Hello, Chloe. I see that you’ve been keeping well.”

(Same voice, devoid of emotion or inflection, like dead water frozen over to ice.)

Adrien licks his splitting lips and checks his list of scripted replies, each one more contrived than the last. _Yes, father, I've been well. What a wonderful surprise to have you home. How was the trip from Paris? We missed you while you were away._

But it turns out that no response is required, because his father looks through him as quickly as he's seen him. Lady Bourgeois steps up to his side, tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow. Together, they disappear up the path to the house.

Chloe excuses herself just as quickly, ducking under Sabrina’s umbrella and hurrying away through the squelching mud. Left alone with his spiralling thoughts, Adrien stands shivering beneath the rain until Jean calls him from across the courtyard.

As Adrien approaches, stammering apologies and moving to take the first of his father’s bags, the older man grips his shoulder firmly and speaks beneath the cover of distant thunder. 

“Sabrina loves Chloe more than anyone else. She won’t say a word to either of your parents.” He leans in closer, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Come find me after everyone leaves for the ball. I’ll take you.”

Stunned into speechlessness, Adrien nods. Jean squeezes his shoulder again and hoists a suitcase under his arm, departing in the direction of the kitchen door. 

_Two days._ He can keep it together for two days.

Even as he thinks it, it feels like fool's gold.  
  


* * *

  
  


Dinner that night is worse than Adrien expects. 

Usually he'd relish the chance for a hot meal, but seeing his father and his stepmother in one place turns his stomach to a roiling mass of worms. He feels grossly out of place in the richly furnished dining room, dressed in his work clothes and stained with soot while his family are clad in their evening best. His father sits at the head of the table, in the carved mahogany chair that stays empty all year. Adrien can feel the weight of his gaze like a burning brand against his skin. 

"How is council business, Gabriel? We heard about the attacks at court. I trust that you've been keeping safe."

His stepmother speaks between prim little bites, her voice crisp as autumn leaves. She may as well be renting cargo space, not speaking to a husband whom she hasn’t seen in months. Truly, Adrien hates to admit it, but the two of them are perfectly matched.

"As safe as I can," his father answers. "The investigation is keeping me busy. I’d have more to show for my efforts, but King Dupain and Madame Cheng cannot be convinced to lift their protections.”

Lady Bourgeois takes a sip of her wine. “Their protections?" she echoes. "You can't possibly mean—"

“Of the victims, yes.”

“The _victims?_ Don’t you mean the _akuma?_ ”

“Innocent men and women, according to the throne.” Gabriel takes a bite of meat and chews deliberately before he continues. “The Hero of Paris is wearing herself thin, and I fear this onslaught will soon overwhelm her. I’ve urged the royal couple to take forceful measures, but kings can only be convinced, not commanded.” 

Of course. If Chloe’s information is even half true, then Ladybug's purpose for being at court is to act as the right hand of the royal family. He’d always known of her efforts against the akuma, but clearly, the danger is greater than he realized.

The thought does nothing to enhance his appetite, and he picks at his plate with increasing anxiety.

“How can they refuse? Those _things_ have been attacking the city for months! It's an infestation!”

“I couldn't tell you, Madame Bourgeois. They've gotten into their heads that the victims were possessed, altered by some kind of sorcerous influence." Gabriel’s voice is perfectly calm as he pushes food around his plate. "It's the kind of idle nonsense I'd expect from the third estate, not the highest court in all of France."

"They’ve been listening to Marinette,” says Chloe flatly. "Everyone knows she's as soft in the heart as she is in the head, even if nobody wants to say it."

Gabriel pauses, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. But Lady Bourgeois whirls on Chloe at once, slamming her palm on the oaken table. Bowls jump and glasses jitter, sloshing wine on the snowy tablecloth. Too attuned to his stepmother's tantrums to ignore the spike of fear in his chest, Adrien freezes.

"Haven’t I taught you anything, Chloe? You don't speak of the princess that way. Not to me, not to the servants, not to any one of your silly, simpering little friends." Her voice cracks like the cut of a whip, and Chloe cowers back into her chair. "The ball is in _two days_. Gossip spreads. Would it kill you to shut your stupid mouth, or are you incapable even of that?”

"She didn’t mean it,” Adrien says hastily. “Chloe doesn’t know what her Highness is like.”

Lady Bourgeois turns towards him, eyes narrowed.

“Why, Adrien, I had no idea that you and the princess were such close friends.”

“I just—”

“You’re clearly brimming with opinions tonight, so why not tell us all about it? I'm sure your father would love to hear it.” She tilts her head as she continues speaking, words dripping with honeyed contempt. “God only knows how the dear man has managed to control the akuma without _your_ advice.”

Chloe sinks deeper into her chair, but does nothing to intercede. It's all Adrien can do to keep himself in hand, brittle and boiling all in one breath.

“I’m sorry, madame,” he answers meekly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

His father’s voice cuts through the room like steel wire slicing through skin, stopping all other sound in its tracks. 

“No, Adrien. By all means, respond.” 

The silence that ensues is thicker than syrup. Every fiber of Adrien’s body recoils, but he forces himself to swallow the apology that leaps to his tongue like a last defense. 

He and Marinette had never met, but privately, he feels that he knows her by proxy. Ladybug had told him countless accounts of the princess’ childhood and debut at court—not the kind confined to logbooks and ledgers, nor the kind repeated in cushy salons; but stories that stemmed from intimate knowledge. He knows that Marinette is as close to her father as she is to her mother; that she’s good at games and bad at lying; that she’d spent three weeks barely eating or sleeping in order to sew her debutante dress. He knows that she’s stubborn and fierce and impulsive, full of fears and flaws that she never let show at court. He’s often wondered what the princess would think, to see her secrets spilled out to a stranger. 

His father raises his eyebrows expectantly, and Adrien fists his hands in his lap.

"If the princess believes in a peaceful solution, then I trust her to find one.” His voice is quiet, but he stops himself from stammering. “Why shouldn't she rule with kindness as well as conviction? The people beside her should believe in her strength, instead of demanding that she display it through cruelty.”

For a moment, everyone simply stares. Then his stepmother turns to her plate with a scoff, stabbing her fork into a piece of roast.

"Oh, Adrien, what a shame you never presented at court. If only Marinette were to hear such eloquence, she'd surely agree to marry you on the spot.”

Pale with humiliation, Adrien ducks his head. Chloe shoots him a pitying look.

His father studies him a moment longer, eyes heavy with consideration, before turning his attention back to his meal. It's a dismissal as clear as Adrien has ever seen, and no amount of implicit acceptance can purge its sour taste from his mouth.

The topic changes swiftly, eschewing politics henceforth. Neither he nor Chloe attempts to speak again.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The day before the ball crawls by at a snail’s pace. With sunset falling earlier and earlier, Adrien struggles to finish his chores in the scant few hours of daylight he has left. But now that he’s desperate for dusk to release him from finding excuses to avoid his father, time has slowed to a sticky stream, dragging him downwards in its grasp.

Luckily, the desire seems to be mutual. As soon as dinner had ended the night before, his father had departed to the privacy of the guest room—not Lady Bourgeois’ chambers; and certainly not the bedroom he’d shared with Adrien’s mother. He must be busy with some matter of state, because he secludes himself in his office all day, and Jean is obliged to bring him his meals. Adrien doesn't see so much as his shadow, which is both a relief and a familiar bitterness. 

He isn’t required at dinner, either. Once the meal is over and Chloe has gone to bed, he pads to the dining room on soundless feet, setting about his usual tasks of clearing the table and sweeping the floor. It's dark outside by the time he's done, but he doesn't bother lighting himself a candle as he heaps dirty dishes into even stacks.

As he plods down the stairs, arms full of plates, he notes with some surprise that the kitchen is still lit. 

Adrien groans beneath his breath. If only the cook didn’t leave so _late._ Then again, he’s already adjusted to the strained silence that’s settled between them, and if all goes well tomorrow, he’ll never have to see her again.

Steeling himself, he steps through the kitchen door—and freezes, stunned into horrified silence. 

It isn’t the cook who’s propped up against the stove, looking for all the world like she’s wandered in for a midnight snack.

It isn’t the _cook_ who’s digging through his things with the heel of one delicately slippered foot, having overturned his pallet next to the kitchen hearth.

It’s—

He stumbles backwards, heart plummeting into his stomach, stomach plummeting into his boots, the ground dropping out from beneath his feet.

Lady Bourgeois snaps her head up to see him. Clenched in her grip, white-knuckled and furious, is the green silk jacket that once belonged to Chloe’s father.

Adrien’s throat locks up like a casket. “I—”

He can’t tell what the rest of his body is trying to do—get his back against a wall, or make a run for it up the stairs, or simply break apart into a billion terrified pieces—but it doesn’t matter, because his stepmother closes the distance in an instant, tossing the jacket aside and fisting her fingers into his hair. 

Before he can brace himself, before he can even begin to process _how much_ has gone wrong and _how quickly,_ his back slams against the brick divider and erupts with pain like a broken dam. There’s a horrible noise, like a dozen windows breaking, and he realizes he must have let go of everything he was holding. He barely registers glass and china crunching beneath his boots like bone, hair being ripped from his stinging scalp.

“Looks like that’s another mess you’ll have to clean up, Adrien.” It’s more a snarl than a spoken sentence. “It seems to me that making messes is all that you’ve been good for lately.”

(He should have known. He should have _known._ )

Adrien claws blindly at the hand in his hair, trying to loosen his stepmother’s grip. Before he can find purchase around her wrist, she shoves him against the wall and backhands him across the face. Pain explodes through his left cheek, radiating outwards into his skull, and his vision shatters as he crumples into the corner, shrinking behind the barrier of his upraised arm.

“Your father home for the first time in months, and I have to interrupt his important work to tell him his only son is a thief. My sweet, stupid boy, how frankly _embarrassing._ ”

She grabs his wrist, nails carving red beneath the hem of his sleeve. “Don’t you agree, Adrien? Did you think that I wouldn’t know? That I wouldn’t keep track of my _late husband’s belongings?_ ”

Adrien shudders as she drags him towards her, knowing that she’s about to pull back for another swing; knowing that if he resists or hits back, his father will _take_ what little life he has left. 

She knows it, too.

She’s always known.

(How did she find out? _When_ did she find out? How could he be _this_ careless after _this_ long?)

“How dare you dishonor his memory,” she says, and for the first time since Adrien entered the room, her voice trembles with real emotion. “How dare you put your _hands_ on his _things._ ”

He shakes his head, too disoriented to deny it. “Stepmother, please—”

The protest splinters on his tongue as she rears back and hits him again. This time, her ring leaves a searing cut across his cheekbone, and his teeth draw blood from the inside of his cheek. Adrien jerks backwards, ripping his arm free, and instantly registers the yawning void where Ladybug’s charm had been tied to his wrist.

Panic lights him up like a firework, and he lurches upright as his stepmother steps back, the bracelet dangling from between her fingers. 

“Give it back,” he gasps, his palms landing heavily amidst shards of broken glass. “Give it back—give it back, it’s mine, I need it, _please_.”

“Do you? It looks like garbage to me.”

“ _Please,_ I found the clothes in the attic, I didn't know they were his!” It's the best half-truth his scattered wits can muster. “I'm sorry I took them, I just wanted to go to the ball!”

No sooner have the words left his mouth than he stops, struck dumb by his own admission. God, is he _stupid?_ Is he completely witless? Is there a working brain inside his skull, or is there nothing between his ears but empty air? 

He’s dimly aware of the room spinning around him, a nauseating compound of agony and hysteria pounding in his temples and coursing through his veins. 

“Since when were you planning to go to the ball?” His stepmother enunciates every word as though he’s either half-deaf or half-witted, utterly transformed by the strength of her fury. “Since when were _you_ planning to make your way to Paris so you could—so you could present yourself as an _option_ to the _Crown Princess of France?_ What is _wrong_ with you, Adrien? Are you _insane?_ ”

In lieu of answering, Adrien slumps against the wall, abandoning his attempt to snatch back the bracelet in favor of making himself as small as humanly possible.

“Someone put you up to this. Tell me who, now.”

His back aches. His mouth tastes like copper. He can't speak, can't think, can't _breathe._

“ _Who?_ ” she repeats, in a tone heavy with contempt. “You think that fine clothes and a gentleman's kit can change you into someone worth seeing? You're still the same motherless brat underneath.”

(How can anyone be this cruel? How can anyone be this full of _hatred?_ )

Lady Bourgeois draws her hand back again, and Adrien curls away from her, sick to his stomach, his throat clogged up with swallowed blood. 

“Fine. Don't tell me. See if you wind up going anywhere.” She drops the bracelet into her pocket and grabs him by the elbow, dragging him to the door. Adrien’s vision narrows until it’s barely there at all, until the room is blurred and indistinct at the edges. All he can see and sense and feel is the white-hot throbbing in his cheek, the pain of it seeping through every vein until his body pulses like one open wound. 

“Your father can deal with you in the morning,” she snaps. “I don't want to see your face.”

Without looking, he knows that they’ve reached the cellar door, and the last of his resistance sputters into dust. His breath comes quick and feverish and shallow, the useless knowledge of what’s about to happen breaking overhead in an icy wave.

She shoves him, harder than she’s ever shoved him before, and the earth yawns open like the mouth of a grave. Stumbling down the steps into a sea of stale air, Adrien barely hears it at all when she slams and locks the door behind him, plunging his world into perfect darkness.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why would the king’s huntress give you this?”
> 
> Adrien chews on the corners of his mouth, scoring cuts into the palms of his hands. _Say something else. Say anything else. Say it was the princess. Say it was a mistake._
> 
> But it slips from him unbidden, as easily as breathing: the single truth at the center of everything.
> 
> “Because I love her, father. And I want to stay with her in Paris.”

Sitting in blackness so absolute he barely knows that his eyes are open, Adrien pulls his knees to his chest and huddles into the corner of the room. 

Every exhale cuts his breath a little shorter, his lungs filling up with powdered glass. He can feel his chest winding tighter and tighter, taut as a drum and reverberating with panic. There’s nothing to distract him, nothing to calm him, nothing but him and his clamoring thoughts in a gaping maw of mouth-warm dark. 

If only he could think—

—God, he has to _think_ —

He presses a hand to his injured cheek, tracing the cut below his eye. His fingers come away smeared with blood.

_**Think.** What the hell are you going to **say** to him?_

He’s had enough practice lying to his father to know it never works in his favor. Two words into a ten-word conversation, he’d find himself pinned like a butterfly beneath glass, his every thought on spotlit display. For a man who wields indifference like a weapon— _so **dramatic,** Adrien, just like your mother_—his father’s insight into his emotions is very nearly supernatural.

But perhaps he could wield the truth to his benefit. Perhaps his father would see the wisdom in keeping Ladybug as an ally at court. Perhaps, with the right words, he could be persuaded to pity—to a punishment, _any_ punishment, besides sending Adrien away.

It wouldn’t come to that.

It _couldn’t_ come to that.

(Hasn’t he been useful here? Hasn’t he worked hard? Hasn’t he honored his mother’s memory by looking after the house she left him? Hasn’t he worn his fingers to the bone and his skin to a suit of empty nerves, trying and _trying_ his broken best to be patient, gentle, hopeful, kind—all the things she taught him he should strive to be?)

((It has to be worth something—not enough, but _something._ ))

((( _He_ has to be worth something.)))

By the time the door opens, his thoughts have quieted, and Adrien is drifting from dream to murky dream, finally too exhausted to stay awake.

  


* * *

  


“Adrien.”

Even after all these years, hearing his name in _that_ tone of voice sets Adrien scrambling to his feet. Facing the door, he straightens instinctively, feet together and hands at his sides. For an instant, he’s thirteen years old again, being rebuked for sleeping late or skipping one of his lessons. 

Standing on the staircase, crowned by a halo of morning light, Gabriel takes him in. 

“Your stepmother told me what happened.” His eyes pass over the cut on Adrien’s cheek without comment. “Is it true, then?”

Adrien says nothing. Is _what_ true, exactly? His secrets are too many to ever keep straight, tangled as they are like a thousand red strings: Ladybug and Chloe, the letter inside his shirt; the quiet courtship he’d conducted in the woods; the ghosts and the grief and the scars beneath his sleeves; the dream he had dreamed of running through the trees until his tattered feet gave out beneath him, until he was too far gone for fear to ever find him.

Gabriel shakes his head, glasses glinting, and takes a heavy step down the stairs. 

“What did you expect? You never would have made it as far as the city. Even if you’d reached the palace gates, the invitations were royally sealed weeks ago.”

“I know, père. I'm sorry.” 

“Children ask for forgiveness, Adrien. Adults understand that their actions have consequences.” His father reaches the bottom of the staircase, close enough to glimpse the lines at his mouth and the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. “I was back for one night. How can I rest when you act this erratically? When you so easily, so _blithely_ flaunt what little trust I’ve invested in you?”

The questions aren’t for Adrien to answer, but for him to wither beneath like physical blows. He knows the trap that his father is setting: first his disappointment, heavy as a headstone; followed by the subtle promise of punishment; followed by silence in the face of Adrien’s grovelling.

Four years he’s fallen for it. Four _years_ he’s backtracked and bargained and begged, twisting himself into knots like a length of old rope. But Gabriel is unchanged, unbudging as ever, and Adrien—

—Adrien is so _tired._

“Père, please just let me explain. Just listen to what I have to say, and I won’t argue with your judgment.”

His father’s face is utterly unreadable. After a heartbeat’s deliberation, he steps forward, pressing his thumb to Adrien’s cheek. Adrien freezes—at the solid body blocking his escape, at the building pressure beneath the bruise—but some small part of him turns towards the touch, like a flower opening its face to the sun.

“Tell me the truth,” his father says quietly. “I can’t help you if you won’t be honest with me.”

Adrien pulls away, bracing himself against the cellar wall. 

“I was invited to the ball by the Hero of Paris.”

Time grinds to a jittering stop. Then it moves again, ticking past sluggishly, thick and slow as spoiled cream. Lips flat and eyes agleam, Gabriel looks him up and down, towering above him despite the closeness in their heights.

“When?” he asks, in a voice like the edge of a knife. 

“Two weeks ago,” says Adrien, stifling a twinge of unease. He takes a step backwards, and his father closes it instantly. Something about it makes his throat clench.

“I saw the guest list myself. No one outside the royal family could have changed it.”

“But I have the letter right here.” With cold hands, he fishes the envelope from his pocket. He’s long committed its contents to memory, but his gut lurches as his father takes it, and the seed of nausea deep in his stomach flowers into a choking vine. 

Gabriel looks at the creamy vellum as though he expects it to melt through his hands like soap. His brow furrows as he adjusts his glasses and lifts the envelope closer to his face, examining the insignia stamped into the seal. 

It’s a gesture Adrien recalls from his childhood, when he used to watch his father at work in the dusty, book-crammed office upstairs. Something yielding yawns inside him—a gentle memory worn to nothing, fingered and fondled like a favorite cloak.

Then his father’s eyes are upon him, and the feeling turns black, a bloodless hole in the center of his chest.

“Why would the king’s huntress give you this?”

Adrien chews on the corners of his mouth, scoring cuts into the palms of his hands. _Say something else. Say anything else. Say it was the princess. Say it was a mistake._

But it slips from him unbidden, as easily as breathing: the single truth at the center of everything.

“Because I love her, father. And I want to stay with her in Paris.”

It’s not a feeling so much as a state of being. It’s the bassline of his heartbeat and the ichor in his veins, the quicksilver lightness of his entire body—the way he moves around her like a satellite to a star, the _need_ of her shaping his every thought like clay. Standing in her presence, soaking in her smile, Adrien can feel what he’s never felt before: that his flesh and sinew are gold and silver; that he’s something treasured, something _precious._

Now that he’s started, he can’t seem to stop, and the words come one after another after another in a flood he can neither steer nor stem.

“Father, if you let me do this, I can finally stop being a burden to you. I can leave the house, take a different name, make a living for myself by working in the city. I could pay you back every penny of what you spent to keep me here. I don't even have to show my face in court, I could—”

“She gave you this.” Gabriel cuts him off, his focus fixed on Ladybug's letter. “She gave you this, in person.”

Another twinge of warning, deep in his gut. “Yes, père. That’s what I said.”

“ _She_ invited you? Not the king or queen, not—not Princess Marinette?” An almost feral urgency enters his father’s voice, and Adrien’s head snaps up in surprise. “You got this from _her?_ ”

“She said—she didn’t say how she got it. But she works for the king, doesn’t she? I thought she just…” He trails off, disoriented. “Why would it have come from anyone else? I doubt the princess even knows I exist.”

He’d thought for sure that his father would be livid. Six _months_ of visits that Adrien had kept secret—their sunny afternoons, their nighttime meetings, their walks in the forest at all hours of the day. He’d thought for sure that it would come to tears; that it would end the way it always did: Adrien self-destructing with the strength of his remorse, sincerity beaten into him by measures, while his father stood tall and watched him shatter.

But Gabriel seems—

— _distracted_ , his attention elsewhere entirely. 

Without another word, he tucks the envelope into his jacket and makes his way towards the cellar stairs. 

“Father? Where are you going?” Adrien starts after him, frantic with confusion. “Father, wait! That's mine, give it back!”

He gets as far as grabbing Gabriel’s arm. Then his father whirls with a speed he shouldn't possess, more like a general than a palace bureaucrat, and shoves him back with vicious strength. Before he can breathe, before he can _blink_ , Adrien collides with the nearest shelf. Pain erupts in his already bruised shoulder, a choked noise escaping his throat as he hits the ground and lays there, winded.

One hand braced on the wooden banister, his father stops in the open door.

The expression on his face is almost startled. As though his hands had moved of their own volition—as though it _means_ something to him that Adrien is _hurt._

Rage explodes inside him like gunpowder, and he breaks in two with the effort of breathing.

“Why are you _like_ this? Why have you _been_ like this since my mother died?” 

It hurts as much to ask as to wonder, and he curls around the agony that fists in his gut. His father turns towards him, mouth twisting, but makes no move to descend from the stairs.

“You know _nothing_ of that girl and what she's done. Whatever your imagined relationship, it ends now.” His features are wooden in the sullen light, stiff and cold and hard as stone. “Ladybug is the reason your mother is _gone_.”

The statement is so far from making sense that it barely registers through the ringing in his ears. “What are you talking about? Mére _left_ us, father. You were the one who told me her death was an accident.”

“And I begged His Majesty to bring her back, using the power his _witch_ so freely wields. But they refused, Adrien. They said the cost was too great.” His father’s voice is raw with hatred, every word reeking like an open sore. “You think that girl could ever love you? I would have traded a kingdom for your mother. She won’t give a single _soul_ for you.”

Adrien stares at his father, and his face is the face of a stranger.

It _hurts_ like nothing has ever hurt before—like no blow or beating ever could. A lifetime of love is carved into the hide of him, and every memory aches like a wound: how his eyes had warmed with pride when he practiced the piano; how his hand had cooled his forehead as he writhed with fever; how his mouth had crinkled upwards in rare, fleeting smiles.

(How his arms had felt around him, holding instead of hurting, holding them together in the midst of all their grief.)

Adrien hauls himself onto his knees, ignoring the sting in his shredded palms, and spits his hurt through gritted teeth.

“This isn't about Ladybug. This is about me and making me miserable, just like everything else you've done.” His breath is ragged, laced with fire, and he blinks back the tears that sting his eyes. “All I tried to do was be there for you. And when you wanted no part of me, I stayed out of your way. In four years, I’ve never once asked you for anything. What did I do to make you hate me _so much?_ ”

For an instant, his father’s face breaks open. Adrien can't name the emotion he reads there—shock or rage or naked anguish—but it’s gone before he can grasp it, his expression shuttering closed.

“You’re my son, Adrien. I would never try to hurt you.” There’s a note in his voice that Adrien can’t identify, low and cold and sharp with spite. “You think you know what _hatred_ is? If I truly despised you, you would be dead.”

Adrien gapes at him, his vision blurring. 

But there’s no creature from the woods that sucked the soul from Gabriel’s shadow, that leapt inside his skin and took up residence behind his eyes. It’s his father who stands before him, whole and unbroken, as capable of kindness as he was in the beginning—and it’s his father who studies him, his face going hard, the feeling flickering out of it like a flame against the wind. It’s his father who turns away from him, as though he isn't worth looking at, before folding his hands behind him and climbing the last of the cellar steps.

The door clicks shut, leaving Adrien in darkness, and even the memory deserts him at last:

(How his arms had felt around him in the midst of all his grief, and held them both together as Adrien fell apart.)

  


* * *

  


Somebody knocks on the cellar door. 

Adrien can't find the energy to move. It's impossible to know how much time has passed—only that it passes in starts and stutters, in leary stretches of deeper silence. It could have been minutes since he and his father spoke. It could have been hours that he sat in the dark, his eyes itching with unshed tears. 

"Sabrina said you were in here,” says Chloe. “I just came to tell you that the three of us are leaving. We won't be back until after midnight, maybe even tomorrow morning."

Of course. Gabriel had returned the evening before last, and Adrien had been locked in the cellar all night. Which means that tonight—

— _tonight_ is the night of the ball. 

He has no clothes, no coach, and no lucky charm, and it seems that his parents have every intention of keeping him here until they return.

"Adrien, can you hear me?" Chloe sighs, scuffing her shoe on the pavers outside. "Look, I'm sorry that whatever happened happened. But it wasn't my fault, okay? I warned you what would happen if my mother found out.”

He knows what she wants from him— _I know, Chloe, it's fine, Chloe, it's not your fault, Chloe_ —but he’s run himself dry of comfort to give. There's a stake through his sternum and a sawblade in his chest, cleaving his ribcage slowly in two. 

She isn't going to help him.

 _No one_ is going to help him.

Through the pounding of his pulse, he hears her voice, distant.

“I made her give me that bracelet you were wearing. You can have it back the next time I see you.”

Finally, Adrien feels something useful. He scrambles to his feet and flings himself up the staircase, boots catching on the uneven steps as he slams his palms against the cellar door.

“Chloe, wait. If you see Ladybug, you have to tell her I tried to come.”

“Sure, I guess—”

“Tell her not to worry, okay?” His words are charcoal, black and brittle. “I’ll figure something out. I don’t care if it kills me. I’ll join her in Paris if it’s the last thing I do.”

There’s a lengthy silence from the other side of the door.

“Chloe?” Hands curled into stinging fists, Adrien shifts as he waits for a response. “Are you still there?”

“What do you mean, you’ll join her in _Paris?_ ” There’s a strange undercurrent in his stepsister’s voice. “You mean you’re not going to be living here anymore? You’re leaving for _good?_ ”

“Chloe—”

“Is that what this is about? That’s why you wanted to go to the ball so badly? Because you weren’t planning on coming _back?_ ”

Adrien’s head spins, his mouth going dry.

As though he’d ever come back here without being _dragged_. The total sum of what he’d _planned on_ was shedding his father’s name, finding a room in Paris, and being with Ladybug in whatever capacity her station as a civilian allowed. 

She could be a shopkeeper, a merchant, an artisan—her fingers pricked by needles, her feet worn by walking, her clothes bearing the fragrance of freshly baked bread. The father whom she spoke of so fondly could be an emissary to court, or a soldier in the king’s guard. She might be a noblewoman, comfortable in wealth—or she might be nobody important at all. 

But regardless of who she was and what she could offer him; regardless of the days and nights he would work to pay her back for his bed and board; Adrien’s _plans_ had never included letting Ladybug out of his sight. 

“Chloe,” he begins, aching, pleading, _begging_ — “Chloe, _please._ ”

But his sister is leaving, scrabbling to her feet, her heeled slippers skidding beneath her as she bolts across the courtyard and bangs through the gate, and Adrien can do nothing but lapse into silence as her pounding footsteps fade away.

  


* * *

  


Another lifetime later, two pairs of feet—one light, one heavy—approach through the courtyard and stop at the cellar door. 

“Jean has to go home now,” Sabrina whispers. “I'm sorry, Adrien. I swear it wasn’t me.”

With a jolt, he realizes that the sun must have set. Jean and Sabrina had upstairs rooms so they could tend to Chloe if she woke in the night, but tonight the house was empty, and they wouldn’t sleep there alone. The cook, no doubt, had left hours earlier. Jean would lock the gates and light the lanterns around the grounds, creating the illusion of people at the estate, but Adrien would be alone until they returned at first light. 

“There’ll be other chances,” says Jean, with ill-afforded kindness. “You'll see. Everything will work out in the end.”

(There won’t be other chances. Forgiveness isn’t one of his father’s strengths, and _Adrien_ will never be one of his weaknesses.)

Once they've left him, Adrien slides down the wall and digs his nails into the hollow of his wrist. He counts to a hundred, then a thousand, then ten thousand. He staggers his breathing into the back of his hand, holding himself together with all the strength he has left, until he's certain, _certain,_ that he’s completely alone. 

Then he crumples into a tight little ball. It’s what he used to do when he got nightmares as a child, sulking conspicuously in the door to his parents’ bedroom until one or both of them stirred and came out. 

(Craving comfort and kindness and coddling; as _stupid_ now as he was back then.)

He hates the strangled sob that leaves him, the useless tears that slide down his cheeks, the tremor that starts in the tips of his fingers and grows to encompass his entire body. As though he could have made it. As though it could have worked. As though a lifetime of _bad luck, bad luck, bad luck_ could turn in his favor, just this _once._

Weighed down by the misery of the last few hours, days, _years,_ Adrien buries his face in his knees and finally starts to sob in earnest. 

“Wow, kid.” The tiny, tinny voice _directly next to his ear_ makes him freeze in alarm, his cheeks slick with tears. “Usually it takes me at _least_ two weeks to get my chosen ones to cry.”

Slowly, barely daring to breathe, Adrien swivels to meet the gaze of two enormous emerald eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You could give me magic, like my lady has?” he asks tentatively. “You could make me into—a witch? Or something?”
> 
> “Or something,” says Plagg, with another shrug. “You’d just be borrowing my power for a little while. It’s a bargain, get it? You agree to become my holder, and I grant a wish of yours in exchange.”

The first thing he does is clap his hand to his mouth. 

The second thing he does is scramble backwards, his back hitting the wall with a muffled thud as he freezes in place, like a fox in a trap. 

The creature—animal?— _being?_ —blinks back, unimpressed. When Adrien doesn’t speak—doesn’t so much as _twitch_ —he cocks his head in apparent boredom, catlike pupils narrowing to slits. 

“Hellooo? Anyone at home in there?”

Hard as it is to see, the entity in front of him is clearly the same as the one he’d caught watching him that day in the courtyard. His luminous green eyes are instantly recognizable, the rest of his tiny, sprite-like body perfectly camouflaged by the shadows of the room.

“Hey. You know that I can _see_ you, right?”

He blinks—once, twice—but his supernatural visitor doesn’t disappear. If anything, he seems to be waiting for an answer. Timidly, Adrien wets his lips and forces words from his aching throat.

“It’s—it’s _you_. I thought I'd imagined you, that day in the forest.”

“It's only natural to be awed at the sight of primordial chaos incarnate.” Floating forward at eye height—how is it _doing_ that?—the tiny creature comes to a stop a few inches shy of Adrien's nose. “I'm Plagg, by the way. I’ve been watching you for a while now.”

“You have?” Keenly aware of the wall at his back and the pitch blackness of the space he’s trapped in, he leans away, his heartbeat hammering. But Plagg merely shrugs, a gesture so disarmingly human that he can’t help but find it comforting. 

“Honestly? I didn’t bother paying attention the first time you came through my neck of the woods. Or the second, or the third. But a few months back you started showing up every night, and ignoring you got to be more effort than it was worth.” 

Adrien hunches into his corner, trying to regain his senses as Plagg rambles on.

"Nobody cares if you tromp around _my_ forest, but God forbid I go to some human's house, or it's _Plagg, you’re so irresponsible. Plagg, you're going to be seen. Plagg, you can’t just waltz into people’s houses and eat their cheese tarts while the crusts are cooling._ What _ever_ , Tikki, you live in a _palace._ " He wrinkles his nose, whiskers twitching. “But yeah, kid, of course I watched you. You’re like a bull in the world’s most magical china shop.” 

Adrien wheezes through his blocked nose and settles heavily onto his rear. 

“Sorry? I guess?"

Plagg merely blinks at him, reproachful expression intact, and Adrien swallows, massaging his cheek. It still stings, though the pain has dimmed, and the cut below his eye is raised beneath his fingers.

“I swear,” he says, “I didn’t know there was anyone else in the woods. It’s always just been me and Ladybug.”

“ _Everyone_ knows there are things in the woods. _Babies_ know it before they leave the cradle. Grown men won’t go there in broad daylight, but you?” Plagg's tone is tinged with amusement. “I guess you're braver than you look.”

Adrien doesn’t feel brave. He feels exactly as broken as he deserves to feel, now that his own _stupidity_ has cost him his single, shining shot at happiness. He feels small and sick and shatteringly worthless, his bruises stamped across his skin like ink. And above all else, he feels alone, the familiar ache of isolation barely staved off by the lull of Plagg's voice.

“So,” he says miserably, “you’re here to have it out with me? Or punish me for trespassing, or something like that?”

Plagg's eyes widen from slits to saucers. 

“What?” he says, convincingly befuddled. “No, kid, you don’t get what I’m about. Just because you’re annoying doesn’t mean I don’t _like_ you.” He floats a little closer, slowly enough that Adrien can scoot away if he wants to. “You didn't come to the woods for a few weeks, so I thought I’d swing by and have a poke around. Gotta say, this wasn’t how I pictured meeting you.”

There’s a silence then, in that space full of darkness and stifled air, the stench of vinegar and beer and dust fermenting in Adrien's empty stomach.

He scrubs at his face again, drying the last of his tears. It’s been years since anyone caught him crying—god, he can’t remember the last time he _bothered_ —but he can’t summon the energy for embarrassment. 

“Sorry,” he repeats, for lack of other words. 

To his astonishment, Plagg zips down to his side and nuzzles into his uninjured cheek. The top of his head is velvet to the touch, softer against his skin than satin. He lingers only a moment before pulling away, ears laid flat in poorly masked concern.

"Cheer up, Goldilocks. I came here to see you, not to yell at you.”

“I really don’t have anything to give you. I don’t have money or lands or titles. I’m just—” Adrien fists his hands in his hair, twisting strands from his already sore scalp, the remnant of a memory ricocheting through his skull: _you’re no one. You’re no one. You’re no one but a—_ “I’m just a servant. I just clean the fireplaces. That’s all I’ve ever done, and that’s probably all I’ll ever do.”

“Fireplaces are great,” says Plagg wistfully. “Great for making food. Great for taking naps.” Shaking himself out of his reverie, he blinks again, his eyes sharpening. “But, y’know, if you want to do something different, you could become my holder, and I could use my power to help you.”

“Why?” 

“What do you mean, why?” Plagg sounds genuinely puzzled. “I just said I like you. I _chose_ you, Adrien. Now c’mon, let’s get out of here. What do you say?”

At the sound of his name in that pint-sized voice, reality finally reasserts itself. Adrien wipes his nose on his sleeve and dries his hands with the hem of his shirt, swallowing harshly as his breathing evens.

“Alright."

Without the slightest hesitation, Plagg floats backwards up the narrow stairwell and phases through the door as though it's made of air. 

“Plagg?” Heart leaping into overdrive, Adrien scrambles onto his knees. “Plagg, wait, don’t go, I just—”

His sentence cuts off as the lock clicks open, and the door swings outwards in a cloud of pale dust. 

Adrien is on his feet and up the cellar stairs before his brain has time to catch up to his body. Careening to a stop in the empty courtyard, he folds in half with his hands on his knees, sucking clear winter air through his mouth. It’s colder outside than it was underground, but he’s too relieved to care that he's freezing.

For the first time since his stepmother struck him, the fist around his windpipe opens, and tension leaves him in violent shudders as he breathes and breathes and breathes and _breathes._

“Huh," says Plagg, drifting into his peripheral vision. "You alright there, kid? I forgot that humans can’t see in the dark.”

“Thank you,” he rasps. “I really, _really_ hate being down there.”

“What? Like it’s happened more than once? You know what, don’t answer that.” Plagg deposits himself on Adrien’s shoulder and grips the ends of his hair for purchase. “Now that you’re my Chat Noir, things are gonna be different. You’re a little bit shrimpy for the avatar of chaos, but you and me are gonna do great things.”

“Like what?”

“Like eat all the food in your house, for starters. I’ll tell you now that I have a delicate palate, so most of that fortune your stepmother stole from you is going to be wisely invested in my stomach.” Burrowing into Adrien’s neck for warmth, Plagg huffs a sigh into the shell of his ear. “But don’t fret, kitten. I’ll drop some crumbs to fatten you up.”

The tiny presence is a strange source of comfort, but Adrien can't bring himself to argue. If this is what his good luck looks like, he'll take whatever he can get.

  


* * *

  


Several minutes and a sprung lock later, Adrien is standing in the kitchen pantry, watching with growing disbelief as Plagg demolishes the winter stores. 

Now that Adrien can see him properly, his appearance is even more startling than before. He zips around the room like an animated ink drop, ears perked and tail swishing behind him. His body is covered in smooth black fur, and his paws are adorned with pinprick claws that catch the light like crystal beads.

"Well, don't just stand there," he says, picking up a wheel of washed-rind cheese and unhinging his jaw to swallow it whole. "Help yourself. You must be hungry."

"I can't just—"

"As far as they know, you're still locked up, remember? You won’t get blamed for it, so eat whatever you want.”

Adrien opens his mouth to ask, then closes it slowly as Plagg inhales the cheese and promptly pounces on the next in line. At this rate, a couple of extra crusts would hardly make a difference.

A minute later, he’s seated against the wall, his pockets stuffed with apples and his mouth full of bread as his companion wreaks havoc on the shelves above him. 

"So, let's talk about your prospects," says Plagg between bites. "Normally I don’t care what you do with my powers, but we really gotta jumpstart your career as a hero, because I’m not staying in this dump with you forever.”

Adrien almost chokes. “I’m sorry, _what?_ ”

Weaving between baskets like a speck of black soot, Plagg glances down at him, every part of him except for his eyes invisible amidst the shadows of the ceiling. 

“Aw, kid, don't get jumpy. Nothing against you and your sad kitty eyes, but if I wanted to sleep on the _ground_ I’d just stay in the woods.”

“Not _that_. The first part.” Adrien straightens, food forgotten. “What do you mean, a hero? You mean someone like Ladybug? Does she have—” He flounders, unsure of exactly _what_ to call the abstract creature accompanying him. “Does she have, um, someone like you?”

“Ugh. Tikki is _such_ an overachiever. You’ll never need to work half as hard with me.” Plagg lets loose an enormous yawn, arching his back in a midair stretch. “Why work harder when you can work smarter? All you have to do is Cataclysm _one_ dragon, and we’ll be cruising on laurels for the rest of our lives. Like my other boy, George. Though he did get himself martyred like some kind of _pushover_ , so maybe he’s not the best example to lead with.”

“I don’t—” Adrien fumbles, searching for a way to inject sense into the conversation. “I’m pretty sure there aren’t any _dragons_ in Paris. Ladybug protects King Dupain and his family from the akuma.” 

“Does she? Blech. That sounds like commitment.” Plagg picks up an apple the size of his head and devours half in one snakelike bite. “But sure, sunshine, knock yourself out. What’s the threat of gruesome death except a piddling footnote in your quest for _rooooomance_?”

Adrien falls quiet, thinking it over as he picks at the pile of food in his lap. He’d been ravenous only seconds before, but now his stomach is twisted into knots, bubbling to the brim with confusion and excitement.

“You could give me magic, like my lady has?” he asks tentatively. “You could make me into—a witch? Or something?”

“Or something,” says Plagg, with another shrug. “You’d just be borrowing my power for a little while. It’s a bargain, get it? You agree to become my holder, and I grant a wish of yours in exchange.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Whoa, kid. I haven’t even read you the terms and conditions yet.”

“I don’t care. I’d do a lot worse to get out of this house for good.” Adrien crams the last of his bread into his mouth and licks the crumbs off the backs of his hands. “If you're telling the truth about lending me your power, then maybe I can use it to help Ladybug fight. I could be at her side to protect her from danger. I could do something worthwhile instead of _rotting_ here my whole life, getting slapped around and treated like dirt."

Plagg rolls over onto his belly, eyes half-lidded and enormously unimpressed. 

“ _Ugh_ ,” he says, as though Adrien has just admitted to gargling roaches or eating food that he finds in the street. “I knew you were lovesick, but seeing it up close is so much _worse_. For someone who’s meant to be pure of heart, your urge to swap spit with the Hero of Paris is all but oozing off you in waves.”

Adrien flushes crimson down to his collar, but he doesn’t flinch. 

“I’m serious, Plagg. If I do this, I can stop spending every waking _minute_ praying she'll stay safe until the next time I see her." He folds the rest of his food inside a napkin and tucks it into his pockets out of habit. "Maybe you don’t know what it feels like to be helpless, but I won't stand it a second longer than I have to."

Plagg makes a noncommittal noise and shoves the apple into his mouth. Adrien looks on in fascination as he swallows it whole instead of chewing, nosediving off the edge of the shelf and floating to the floor like a deflated balloon.

“Mushy _and_ motivated. I regret this already.” Using his tiny claws for grip, he climbs Adrien’s leg and perches atop his knee. “Alright, then. We'll talk specifics later. Now tell me what _you_ want, and we can get this comedy of errors on the road.”

“I just told you what I want," says Adrien, blinking.

“No, idiot. Tell me your wish."

“My wish?”

"You have to make one before I give you powers, that’s the way this magical hoo-hah works.” Plagg cocks his head, tail lashing behind him. "Aren't you humans all obsessed with hoarding money? Don't you want to be rich like your prat of a father?"

Adrien snorts. "Not really, no."

"What about making your parents pay for locking you up here all these years? Hard to go wrong with a classic like that. And I haven't had an antihero in _ages_."

At that, Adrien stills, tucking his hands underneath his thighs. His fingertips itch for the feel of soft fur, but he tamps down the urge to scratch Plagg behind the ears. The _last_ thing he needs is to offend the god of destruction by petting him on the head like a finicky house cat. 

"You can do that?" he asks, more softly than he intends. 

“Oh, _yes_ ,” Plagg replies, his eyes glinting maliciously. “Yes I _can_ , kitten. All you have to do is touch whoever hurt you, and their flesh will rot from the inside out. The next idiot who lifts a hand to you will be black dust before they hit the ground."

For an instant, Adrien lets himself consider it. 

He'd never need to see his stepmother again. He'd never need to _think_ about her again. He can be freed from the memory of her soul-sucking voice; from the second skin of welts and bruises he wears underneath his clothes at all times. He can be freed from the leash of Gabriel's good name; from the constant, clinging ghost of his disownment. He can finally find happiness without holding his breath in dread of the day that his father destroys it—drags him bleeding and begging to heel; imprisons him anew in some distant county where the King's huntress can never track him.

Both of them reduced to so many cinders, to be swept out like dust when the day is done. 

Even as he imagines it, he knows his answer, and he tips his head back until it meets the wall behind him, his throat sealed shut by a tight knot of bitterness. 

“Thank you, Plagg, but that’s not what I want.”

“Why not? It's what they deserve.”

“Maybe,” says Adrien, with a small, thankless smile. “But maybe I deserve all the bad luck I’ve had. It really just depends on who you ask.”

Plagg studies him for a long minute, ears flat and eyes unblinking. For the first time in their brief acquaintance, he looks exactly as ancient as he claims.

“Bad luck just _is,"_ he says at last. “Nobody, especially you, does anything to deserve it."

Adrien can’t find the words to respond, so he simply shifts his legs in acknowledgment, lifting Plagg a few inches closer to his face. 

“If I have to make a wish in order to be your holder, I think I have one in mind already.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” Plagg yawns, exposing sharp teeth, and the timeless moment from before is broken. “Let’s hear it. Full disclosure, there’s some things I can’t do, but if it’s within my power I’ll _try_ not to half-ass it.”

Adrien takes a deep, bracing breath. His head is clear now, and his chest feels lighter than it has in weeks—hope in his heartbeat; nectar in his veins; a flood of sensation pooling in his gut and warming his chest like fragrant mead.

“I want to go to Princess Marinette’s ball.”

Plagg’s nose wrinkles in confusion. “We have to go to Paris anyway, kid. You don’t have to waste your wish on that.” 

“It’s not a waste,” says Adrien softly. “I know it sounds stupid, but this is the first party I’ve ever been invited to. So, I want to go. I want to wear fancy clothes and drive a fancy coach and put on a fancy mask that hides my real face. I want to find my lady and dance until dawn; and whoever she is underneath that mask, I want to go home with her when the night is out."

“Are you positive? You only get one shot, and once you’re Chat Noir, you can’t take it back.”

“I promised her,” says Adrien. “I said I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Plagg considers him a few seconds longer, eyes wide and bright with intent. Then he shrugs and pounces at Adrien’s shirt, claws ripping vents in the rough-spun fabric as he clambers upwards towards his collarbone.

“You’re such a strange kid, Adrien. But if a party is all you want, then so be it. I’m always down to do less work.” He keeps climbing until he reaches Adrien’s shoulder, turning in place as though as though to fashion himself a nest. “Take us to the forest, noble steed. I’ll tell you the details once we get there.”

By the time Adrien pulls on his old winter coat and fills its pockets with crumbs of cheese, the little god is fast asleep.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You love her back, don’t you? As much as she loves you. That’s why you’re out here in the middle of the night, selling your soul for a way to get to Paris.”
> 
> “From the day I first met her," he admits, ignoring Plagg, who gags against his neck. "I miss her every minute I'm not with her."

As it turns out, Plagg is a heavy sleeper. The first time Adrien tries to wake him, his only response is to burrow into his hair, curling into a ball at the back of Adrien’s neck. It takes several attempts, as well as a bribe of more food, to stir him from his self-imposed slumber.

Roused at last, Plagg yawns dramatically and tips off his perch on Adrien’s shoulder. Adrien cups his hands to catch him, and the tiny creature plops into his palms with all the nonchalance of a lazy cat.

"We're here," he says, trying to contain his impatience. 

Plagg flicks his ears. "I was just getting around to it.”

Adrien waits, vibrating in place. The cold, ever-present, nips his cheeks and the tip of his nose, and his breath turns to steam as it meets the icy air. Come morning, the ground would be thick with frost, and the water in the tanks will have frozen to ice. Knowing Adrien’s luck, it might even snow. 

At length, Plagg hoists himself into midair and inhales deeply, puffing out his chest. 

" _Rena!_ " he yowls, in an inhuman screech that pierces Adrien’s eardrums like glass. "Show yourself, you mangy fox!"

For a long moment, nothing happens. 

Then the forest ripples in an invisible wave of heat. Bushes warp and branches bend—like light in a prism, or a flame behind glass—and the air tingles with static electricity. When it settles, a young woman stands in their midst.

Looking at her is like looking at a memory. One second she’s a girl about Adrien’s age, with curly hair and lively hazel eyes, brown skin tanned browner by the harsh winter sun. The next she isn’t a girl at all, but a grinning shade in human shape. Her ears are fox ears, lined in cream and tipped in black; and her teeth are fox teeth, small and white and sharp. A magnificent russet tail trails out behind her, flicking back and forth along the forest floor. 

“Hello, Plagg,” the girl—Rena—greets them. “I see that your manners are as lacking as ever.”

“My house, my rules,” Plagg replies tartly. “I thought I smelled you back in my woods. Don’t tell me you dragged that husband of yours with you.”

“Nino and I are just passing through. You’re lucky I was close enough to hear your call.”

“Passing through? Not going to Paris?”

“Not on your life, my smelly little friend. We might run into someone we’ve robbed.” Rena tosses her thick head of hair. “There’s blue bloods _everywhere_. The roads are overrun. As though Princess Marinette gives two shits in a bucket about some pissant third son from across the south border.”

She turns to face him, her face sharp with interest, and Adrien takes an unwitting step back. “So, how about you introduce me to your friend? He’s quieter company than you usually keep.”

“This,” says Plagg, as he descends to Adrien's shoulder and nuzzles fondly against his cheek, “is _Adrien._ ”

Rena’s face lights up with recognition.

“ _The_ Adrien? _Ladybug’s_ Adrien? The boy from the chateau beside the woods?"

“The one and only. I take it you’re still in contact, then.”

Flustered and flattered in equal measure, Adrien scuffs his booted feet and fidgets shyly with the clasp of his cloak. His heart thuds gently in the hollow of his chest, swollen to bursting against the joint of his ribs.

“It's nice to meet you," he says at last. "Are you a friend of my lady's, then?”

“I am now,” she says, her voice gentling. “She saw me as something else back then, but that was years ago, before she became the Hero of Paris.”

The bubble of warmth inside him bursts, and Adrien drops his gaze to the ground in a move so practiced he despises himself for it. 

It’s an age-old hurt that has him in its grip. Of course he isn’t Ladybug’s first love. Of course he isn’t her _only_ love. Ladybug is the girl who holds the stars in the palm of her hand; who jostles glittering elbows with kings. The world she belongs to is wide and wonderful beyond anything Adrien can possibly dream of—and _dreaming_ is all he's good for, isn't it? He _dreams_ of being more than he is. Of being like the stranger who stands in front of him, as far from fear as the sky from an ant.

_You think that girl could ever love you?_

Adrien bites his inner lip and forces his father out of his head. 

“One day, you can tell me what she used to be like.” He straightens, meeting Rena's gaze. “But right now I'm looking for a way to get to the palace. I know you’ve barely met me, but we're here to ask for your help."

It won't be long before he's part of that world. In a matter of hours, he'll be _beside_ her for good. He will _not_ back down, his tail between his legs, from the one good thing that his luck has ever handed him.

Rena tucks one foot behind the other and plants a thoughtful hand on her hip. 

“I thought as much,” she answers slowly. “But once you're on the road, I'm afraid you're on your own. Between the akuma in Paris and the bounties on our heads, it’s too dangerous for Nino and I to stay.”

She takes a step towards him, and Adrien stands his ground. She’s hard to look at in a way he can’t place; bleeding magic that sears to the touch, shimmering in place like a desert mirage. But by the time she reaches him, she’s a girl once more, and the smile that dimples her cheeks is soft.

"I might have fallen for someone else, but I haven’t forgotten what Ladybug is like.” She smiles wider, tilting her head. “Normal folk like you and I, we don’t just stumble into that kind of luck.”

Adrien laughs hoarsely. “You can say that again.”

“You love her back, don’t you? As much as she loves you. That’s why you’re out here in the middle of the night, selling your soul for a way to get to Paris.”

“From the day I first met her," he admits, ignoring Plagg, who gags against his neck. "I miss her every minute I'm not with her."

Rena runs her fingers up the length of her gloved arm, like a conjurer pulling a coin from a child's ear. Sure enough, a wooden flute appears in her grip, painted to match her silk-lined tailcoat. With a flourish, she raises the instrument to her lips. 

"Then you’ll be the luckiest of them all, and the last.”

As soon as Rena starts to play, the forest around them shifts in place. The notes of the flute are high and clear, weaving together in a lilting melody that slips through Adrien's grasp like water. Snatches of color and motion and shape flit in and out at the corners of his eyes, and he turns in circles where he stands, trying to catch hold of them before they fizzle to nothing. 

When it stops, he discovers that his eyes are closed. With the sense of wading to the surface of deep water, Adrien opens his eyes and sees—

—a coach as opulent as any in the palace stables, with beautifully carved doors and decorations sculpted of gilt. Square windows with gold frames are hung with satin drapes for privacy, and the seats are sewn of emerald velvet. Strangest of all is the pair of black horses peaceably harnessed at the front of the carriage, their traces decorated with tiny gold bells. 

"Is it—" He blinks, half-expecting them to melt away like the remnants of a particularly lifelike dream. "Is it _real_?"

"Real enough to get you to the ball and back.” Rena scoops up a handful of dead leaves, rubbing them together between thumb and forefinger. When she opens her hand, she’s holding a sealed envelope exactly like the one that Adrien lost. 

"Illusion. My specialty. Don't worry, you can touch it." She hands the envelope to him, and he takes it gingerly, marvelling at the feel of the textured grain. "It won't last long, but it's the best I can do."

"Can I learn to do this?" he blurts, turning to Plagg. "Can I make things using your magic, too?"

Plagg shifts lazily upon his shoulder.

"Making things is Tikki's power. Breaking them is more like mine. Our chosen ones usually work together, but I've been on leave from the heroing business."

"Why's that?" asks Adrien, circling the illusory coach—fascinated, but not quite daring to touch. 

"My last Chat Noir was centuries ago, and she wasn't a sugary little sap like you."

Before Adrien can ask, Rena draws close, her footsteps soundless on the forest floor. Her smile turns sad as she reaches towards him, brushing his cheek with the tips of her fingers.

When she retracts her hand, he knows without looking that the bruise below his eye has vanished, though he can still feel it throbbing just above his cheekbone.

“Travel safe, Adrien,” she says, and steps back.

Keeping clear of the spellspun horses (they look so _alive_ , with their dark, liquid eyes, and the muscles shifting beneath their smooth coats), Adrien reaches for the door of the carriage. The wood is cool and solid to the touch, its molded decorations too detailed to dream. 

“Well, kid, what are you waiting for?" Plagg nods at the gilded handle. “Let's go already. Those cushions better be as soft as they look.”

“Wait,” says Adrien. The last thing he wants is to seem ungrateful, but there’s one more item that bears consideration. “I can’t show up at the palace in what I’m wearing now. I had some clothes, but....”

“Trust me, I’ve got your costume handled. Now pick your jaw off the ground and get in the coach. We’ve still got to make it all the way to Paris.”

Choosing not to argue further, Adrien stammers his thanks to Rena and steps inside the magical carriage, settling Plagg on the cushion beside him as the door swings shut of its own accord. 

No sooner has he found his seat than the horses start to pick up their pace, breaking into an even canter without the influence of reins or whip. Drawing back the luxurious curtain, Adrien leans out the carriage window for one final look at the forest behind him. 

But Rena has vanished from her place beside the path—leaving no sign of either the girl or the fox—and the woods are as empty as when he first found them.

  


* * *

  


Once he's adjusted to the idea of travelling to Paris in a magic coach, the journey passes without incident. Plagg abandons the cushion for the greater comfort of draping himself across Adrien's lap, poking his thigh with tiny claws whenever he moves more than an inch in either direction. Content to stay awake, he watches through the window as the woods flatten out into rolling green farmland; which gives way, in turn, to the city outskirts. 

The road widens as they approach the city centre, lined by oil streetlamps that lighten the night sky. He'd been a child the last time he visited Paris, and he’s startled to see how well he remembers it: the red brick and white stone of its noble houses; the soaring windows of its Gothic chapels; the open plazas ringed by zinc rooftops.

Stirring from his slumber at last, Plagg joins him at the carriage window.

"We're almost at the palace, kitten. Looks like you're arriving fashionably late.”

Adrien watches the lights go by, swallowing down the superheated excitement that overtakes him like a fever.

"Plagg, do you think you could come inside with me? You can probably hide in the pockets of my coat.” 

"Oh, about that. I almost forgot the rules." Plagg blinks up at him from the ledge beneath the window. "Actually, this is kind of important, so make sure you remember everything I say."

The truth is, Adrien can barely hear him over the rush of blood that fills his ears. But Plagg looks more serious than he's ever seen him, so he nods. 

"Rule number one. As soon as you start to use my power, I'll be sucked into the ring until the magic releases. You won't be able to talk to me, so you'll be on your own. "

"What ring?"

" _This_ ring." With a flick of his tail and a twitch of his whiskers, the carriage fills with a flash of green light. When it subsides, there is indeed a gleaming band on Adrien's right hand, perfectly matched to the width of his fourth finger. 

"This is called a miraculous, kitten. Long story short, it's a magic jewel that allows you to channel my power safely." He can tell from Plagg’s voice that he’s said the words before. "Keep it on you everywhere you go. If you lose it, you'll be powerless, and I won't be able to do anything to help you."

Raising his hand to the level of his eyes, Adrien takes in his newfound gift. The ring is shaped of polished silver, neither particularly plain nor particularly elaborate. Devoid of stone or signet, it sits discreetly on his finger, easily mistaken as the kind of cheap trinket sold for pennies in the markets of Paris.

"Don't lose the ring. I understand."

"Rule number two: don't tell _anyone_ who you are. There's too many things a black magician could use against you. Your true name, for one. Or an item, something you own."

"A black magician?" asks Adrien blankly. "Is that who's responsible for creating the akuma? Is _that_ why Ladybug can't tell me who she is?"

"Right, so make sure you're _certain_ you've found her before you show off that pretty face."

For the hundredth time in the last half-day, he wishes he still had Ladybug’s bracelet. But even if it was somehow returned to him now, wearing it at the ball is a surefire way of exposing himself in front of his family. 

"Rule number three—and this is the only one that might be a problem, since all you're really doing is crashing a ritzy party." Plagg rolls his eyes, but his tone remains grave. "I can only lend you my power for a set amount of time before the transformation releases. If it happens at the ball, everyone will see you, including your stepmother and your father. So I'm giving you a curfew, like any responsible guardian would."

"I'll take as much time as you can give me."

" _Midnight_ , kid. Not a single minute later. Make sure you're out of the palace by then, or all this will be over before it's even begun."

Adrien relaxes against the plush velvet seat, permitting himself a sigh of relief. "That's hours away. I can find her by then."

"You're welcome. Make sure you don't forget it while you're rolling around the bushes with the love of your life."

Scooting away at breakneck speed, Adrien glares as best he can with his face flaming red from forehead to throat. 

"Oh my god—I wouldn’t—we've barely even _kissed_."

"Kitten, it’s so cute that you think I care." Plagg yawns, as though to emphasize his point. "Anyway, I hope you don't have questions, because I'm nowhere near awake enough to answer them. Besides, it looks like we're finally here."

Sure enough, the black horses are slowing, coming to a halt in a marble courtyard already teeming with other carriages. The _heys_ and _whoas_ of harried coachmen combines with the chittering of their noble passengers, creating a glorious, heart-stopping din. Even without looking, he knows what stands before them: the storied facade of the royal palace, floor upon floor of stately columns soaring upwards to wrought-iron balconies, all of it resplendent with twinkling golden lights.

"Showtime, sunshine. Are you ready to go?"

Somewhere in that palace, Ladybug is waiting for him. He swallows his heartbeat into his chest, and when he speaks, his voice is stronger than he's ever heard it.

"I've never been readier for anything in my life."

"Good," says Plagg, with the faintest of smirks. "Now, the magic words are _transform me_. As soon you say them, I'll be pulled into the ring, and you'll be dolled up and ready to dance."

"Thank you," he says fervently. "Thank you, thank you, _thank you._ "

"Midnight, Adrien. Remember the rules." Plagg’s eyes drop to the ring on his right finger, huge and green and luminous with excitement. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

With one last glance out the carriage window—to the seething masses of ladies and gentlemen with their faces hidden in glittering masks; to the palace lit up to shame the night sky—Adrien folds his hand into a fist, the ring on his finger sparkling like a star. 

"Transform me," he whispers—and the world sheers away.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Too late—far too late, oh  _god_ —he drops to one knee and takes her free hand, pressing a kiss against the back of her glove. She allows it, eyes narrowed as she studies his face, her brows furrowed as though in recollection.
> 
> "Your Highness," he croaks. It comes out hoarse.

As dusk gives way to darkest night—the hour announced by the crystal tones of the clock overlooking the inner courtyard—the boy who used to be Adrien Agreste ascends to the palace like a fable made flesh. 

Unescorted, unattended, he stalks up the steps. He carves through the crowd like a knife through new butter, a sleek black shadow in a riot of color. His only silver is the ring on his finger, and his only gold is the gold of his hair; but every head pivots, and every neck cranes, and every eye widens, as though to see the sun itself.

It feels like—

(He thought it would feel like hiding; like lying; like swallowing a secret, bloody beneath his tongue.)

(Like dinner last night at his father's table, his throat too tight with dread to swallow.)

(Like pouring tea for his stepmother's guests, shrinking in his skin as they turned to stare—at his mother’s pale hair all stained with soot, at his mother’s green eyes in his swollen face.)

But it feels like nothing Adrien has ever felt before. 

In fact, it doesn't feel like _Adrien_ at all.

He hands his invitation to the well-coiffed steward presiding over the palace entrance, dressed in the red livery of a royal servant. For an instant, anxiety roils in his gut. But the man barely glances at the illusory letter, wide eyes flitting from the rapier at his hip to the smooth black mask across his face.

"On behalf of Mademoiselle Marinette Dupain-Cheng, royal heiress and Princess of France, it is my greatest pleasure and honor to welcome you." Bowing neatly, he steps towards the gates. "How do you wish to be announced, monsieur?”

He touches the fitted edge of his mask and grins so widely it hurts his cheeks, wild and wicked and breathlessly bright, everything about _it_ and _this_ and _him_ at once familiar and euphorically foreign. 

"Chat Noir," he replies. "Announce me as Chat Noir."

  


* * *

  


Entering the palace is overwhelming. Chat is no stranger to the airs of wealth and the extravagant appointments of noble dwellings, but even he finds his breath cut short as he's ushered into the central gallery. 

To his right is a wall of soaring windows, overlooking the fairy-lit gardens below. To his left is a bank of marble columns linked by archways inlaid in glass. The vaulted ceiling overhead is decorated by panel upon panel of paintings, knights and monsters and mythical creatures, their vibrant colors straight from the realm of dreams. Most astounding of all are the thousands of candles that light every inch of the enormous room, burning like stars from gold candelabras and dangling crystal chandeliers. 

The gallery is already teeming with nobles—laughing, eating, and trading whispers at round tables of burnished silver. Scarlet-clad waitstaff dart amongst them, like silver minnows in a sea of lionfish. Masked faces snap in his direction as Chat steps down the elongated hall, boots ringing on the polished marble floor.

 _Let them look,_ he thinks, for the first time in a lifetime. _Let them look at the boy who Ladybug loves._

He sees himself in the mirrors between the archways, and the boy reflected back at him is practically a stranger. His fitted silk coat is black as night, paired with dark breeches and a gold-embroidered waistcoat. His hair—a far cry from the rigidly curled wigs preferred by other men at court—falls wild and golden around his face. His eyes glitter green behind the black mask, greener than any human eyes should be, their pupils glamoured to catlike slits.

 _That_ boy steps forward with his head held high, as though every room he enters is his to command. And command it he does, if the murmurs ring true—ranks of counts and princes and dukes parting before him like the waters of the Red Sea. 

_She's here._

Whether it's magic or madness or raw animal hope, he feels it like a current, like an omen in his bones. A force that turns him in its grip, drawing him like smoke through the shining, shimmering hall. He can feel his lady's presence the way she must have felt his, to have found him so easily night after night.

It reverberates through him until he trembles, until it burns him up like an open flame—his skin and sinew, his breath and blood, his heart in blazing, brilliant shambles, its beat a steady, soaring song—

_She's here, she's here, she's here._

Time moves at once too swiftly and too slowly. Chat makes his way down the hall of mirrors, keeping to the walls to stay clear of the dancers. Couples mingle in candlelit alcoves, the soft hum of their conversation broken by the music of tinkling glasses. There's no shortage of coy glances thrown his way, and he can only hope that his searching gaze is read by others as more of the same.

As the night progresses, a few even approach him. Girls with red lips and full, rosy cheeks, butterfly-bright in their fluted silks. None with Ladybug’s black hair and blue eyes; none with her smirking, kissable mouth; none with her voice, as warm as a summer day.

He turns them aside with chivalrous phrases, wending his way through the crowds until—

"What on earth is the matter with you, Chloe? You've been off color ever since we got here."

Chat goes cold from head to toe.

Mere meters away is the Lady Bourgeois, bent over one of the spindly silver tables. Beside her sits Chloe, face in her hands, cascading silk skirts spilling out across her lap. They're both wearing masks of suitable extravagance. His stepmother's conceals her face entirely, painted with gold leaf to match her hairpiece. Chloe's black-and-yellow mask covers only the area around her eyes, matching the black beading on her tiered saffron dress.

"I've told you a hundred times already, mother. Nothing's wrong."

"Then act like it, Chloe. This is the most important night of your life. Your future husband could be one of these young men, and here you are sulking like a petulant child."

"I'll get up in a minute. Just leave me _alone_." The chair screeches as Chloe stands up, planting her palms on the surface of the table. With a sickening jolt, Chat catches sight of Ladybug's bracelet around her wrist. 

The air in his lungs turns to pins and needles as he catches his breath and backs away. For the first time since he arrived, his certainty is shaken. It's Adrien's terror that ices his veins, and Adrien's memory of a thousand cruelties that bubbles to the surface in a wretched tide. 

What if she sees him? Or worse, _recognizes_ him? All she has to do is scream his real name, and all these fine people will see him for who he is: just the boy who sweeps floors and tends to the fires; just Adrien, bruised and dirty and afraid.

Too consumed by _what if_ to notice the silence—the sudden hush that descends upon the ballroom—he barely hears the footsteps behind him until a hand alights upon his shoulder.

"May I speak to you, my lord?"

His stepmother startles, straightening abruptly. Paralyzed by fear, he freezes in place— but her eyes slide past him without a speck of recognition, and she drops to the ground in a hasty curtsey. 

_What?_

The revellers leap to attention like soldiers, falling to bended knee as one. Their reverence ripples outwards in an undulating wave, leeching all sound from the glittering room, until it seems that even the clock falls silent. 

_Who?—_

With the lingering sense that he's moving through sand, Chat Noir turns and lowers his gaze to the upturned face of Marinette Dupain-Cheng: royal heiress to High King Dupain, first in line to her father's throne, the one and only Crown Princess of France.

  


* * *

  


Her hair: black.

Her eyes: blue.

Her lips: curved up in a subtle smile.

Too late—far too late, oh _god_ —he drops to one knee and takes her free hand, pressing a kiss against the back of her glove. She allows it, eyes narrowed as she studies his face, her brows furrowed as though in recollection.

"Your Highness," he croaks. It comes out hoarse.

"At ease," she replies, without shifting her gaze.

Her words break an unspoken spell over the ballroom, and faint conversation drifts in to fill the silence. The orchestra resumes. The dancers start to sway. His stepmother beats a hasty exit, Chloe in tow as they vanish into the crowd.

Princess Marinette remains where she is, back straight and chin lifted, candlelight warming her golden skin and glimmering off her sleek black hair. Even without the silver tiara that crowns her forehead like a ring of stars, her blood manifests in the grace of her movements; in the considering sweep of her dark-lashed eyes. She's dressed in a resplendent blush-pink ball gown, layer upon layer of crinoline petticoats lending the dress its hourglass shape, the bodice embroidered with curling blossoms. Her feet are clad in sparkling slippers—neither silk nor leather, but sculpted glass. Her only jewellery is a pair of dark earrings, almost invisible amidst the fall of her hair.

Does he stay kneeling? Does he wait for permission to stand? Does he say—oh _god_ , what the hell does he _say?_

Marinette settles the question for him, clasping his hand and tugging him to his feet in a motion so familiar it sets his head spinning. 

Clearing his throat, he stoops in another bow. "Please forgive my distraction, princess. I meant no offense, and humbly beg your pardon."

"Please," she says, releasing his hand, "I'm the one who should seek your pardon. I can't help but notice you've been alone all evening, and not for lack of willing partners. Is something weighing on your mind? Is my party not to your liking?"

"Your Highness, no host could be more charming. Please don't fault your hospitality for the lack of propriety I've displayed here tonight."

"Then what seems to be the problem, my lord? I can't look past the happiness of my guests."

Chat fidgets, searching for an excuse. _She hates liars,_ he recalls— _she hates liars above all else._ He squares his shoulders and steadies himself.

"The girl I love is meeting me here. I've been searching the crowd for her all night."

Marinette looks him up and down, as though she's searching for a sign he doesn't know how to give. Her eyes travel from the toes of his polished boots, to the high collar that frames his throat, to the false ears perched atop his head. Then they return to his face, soft and seeking, her lips ever so slightly parted.

"I see."

It's easy to see why so many suitors have gathered to attend her birthday ball. If not for Ladybug's claim on his heart, it surely would have hammered straight out of his chest. 

"It's still early. Your partner should be here soon." She extends her hand again, palm upturned. "In the meantime, perhaps you'd indulge me by dancing."

Biting back his surprise, and a tinge of alarm—what was court protocol for rejecting the heir? Did they hurl you from the parapets, or simply hang you in the street?—Chat reaches out to take her hand, entwining her fingers with his own. 

"It would be my honor," he replies, with a warmth that belies the ticking clock as heavy as heartbreak in the back of his mind.

  


* * *

  


Dancing with Princess Marinette Dupain-Cheng is the best and worst idea Chat Noir has ever had. 

The worst, because he hasn't danced since he was thirteen years old, when his tutors still laboured under the assumption that Adrien would soon present at court. His boots, steel soled, aren't made for waltzing; let alone for stepping on slippered feet. To say nothing of the fact that the _entire ball_ is looking on with rapt attention, consumed with curiosity towards the boy in black who so carelessly captured Marinette’s attention. 

(The best, because Marinette is light as air in his arms, her hand a warm weight against his shoulder, the feel of her achingly, _impossibly_ familiar.)

"Don’t dance much, _mon petit minou_?"

Their captive audience out of earshot, the princess sheds her formal speech like stepping out of a tight pair of shoes. Her face is inches from his own, their proximity intoxicating in the heady light of the great, glittering chandelier overhead.

"Not with future queens, I don’t. Especially not ones as beautiful as you."

The words roll off his reckless tongue without so much as a by-your-leave, and he nearly chokes as he hears himself speak. But the princess barely bats an eyelash, the _tap-tap-tap_ of her crystal heels keeping perfect time as they spin and turn. 

"That's a smooth line, for a clumsy cat. Tell me, my lord, was it your flirting or your dancing that won over that mystery lady of yours?"

"Neither, your Highness.” He keeps his voice low. "She saw the pretty face underneath this mask, and before I could blink, she had swept me off my feet.”

She rolls her eyes, but her lips quirk upwards.

"What a burden, that women swoon over your every move.”

"It seems to be one you're familiar with, princess." The music moves like liquid amber, but he can barely hear it over the pounding of his pulse. "There must be a hundred dukes and princes lined up in hopes of dancing with you tonight. And yet here we are, with three left feet between us."

The next step of the waltz brings her into his arms, and Chat refocuses on keeping his feet straight. Taking her hand with one of his own, he guides her momentum as they step and sway. His free hand rests in the dip of her back, false claws brushing the vee of bare skin framed by the off-shoulder cut of her dress.

"Well, my lord, if you must know the truth, those hundred dukes don't have half a chance between them. My situation is the same as yours." Her voice drops lower, almost too soft to hear. "The boy I'd hoped to meet here tonight is worth any one of them a dozen times over."

Chat stumbles for the umpteenth time—and sees a faint smirk flash across her face. Hiding his horror with a luminous grin, he recovers long enough to tug her close.

"This mystery boy must be worthy indeed, to keep you waiting in such suspense."

The orchestra swells, then ebbs, then slows. It creates its own space, as soft as held breath, and brings them back together, chest to brimming chest. 

Marinette looks up at him, and her smile is sad.

"He puts his whole heart into the palm of my hand, and he loves me so fiercely, in the face of all his fears. What could possibly be worthier than that?"

She lays her head against his shoulder, and he lets her, setting his hands on her waist. There are tiny flowers threaded into her braid, balancing the silver that crowns her dark hair.

"If you knew him like I do, then you'd know he's worth the wait." What could make _royalty_ speak with such reverence? "He could come to my doorstep dressed in rags, covered in cinders like the day we met, and I'd still be his, my heart and my hand."

Chat goes still, and his heartbeat stops.

( _She’s here_ , it whispers—like a devil in his ear—the same sweet song it’s been singing all night.)

It can't be her.

It _can't_ be _her._

How can it be _Marinette_ who knelt beside him all those mornings, scrubbing caked dirt off his kitchen floor? Who lifted him in her arms and spun him through the trees? How can it be possible that _the crown princess of France_ had told him stories; kept his secrets; fussed over bruises that he refused to explain; held him and humbled him, again and again and again?

 _How?_ How could it possibly be _her?_

Pulse pitter-pattering, he swallows, hard. Fear and denial and fierce, ludicrous _hope_ —he feels so _much_ so _strongly_ all at once, and he's breaking with the force of it, like a dam about to burst. 

“Maybe I know him better than you think.”

Marinette opens her mouth as though to answer, but stops mid-speech, her body tensing. 

A wave of _wrongness_ hits him like a battering ram. It crawls down his spine like a living creature, chilling his suddenly sweat-soaked skin. The gallery—so bright, so beautifully lit—slowly drains of warmth and light, until her hand scalds his through his dark leather glove. 

“Not here,” she whispers, her face gone pale. “Not here, not now, _not now_.”

“Your Highness?” Unconsciously, he moves to shield her, blocking her from view with his superior height. “Princess, what’s wrong?”

“ _Akuma._ ” With one word, the spell over the gallery breaks. Screams ring out across the room, and she raises her voice to drown them out. “Get down _now_!”

Nerves alight with panicked fear, his sharpened senses shrieking a warning, Chat turns towards the ballroom windows just in time to see the first of them shatter.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can do it, princess. I’m going to be just fine, I promise.”
> 
> “I’ll hold you to that,” she answers, soft.

Chat doesn't _think._

He simply _moves_ , driven by instinct he hadn't known he possessed. He and Marinette hit the ground on their knees, and he pulls her close in terrified reflex as another window explodes into smithereens.

"The doors," she whispers, and Chat turns to look. 

Chaos reigns as his fellow guests make a blind stampede towards the far end of the hall. But the great double doors stand firm against their efforts, barred by a force neither seen nor sensed. There'd been guards just outside—soldiers in the king's service—and Chat shudders to think what’s become of them. 

The third explosion is followed by a tremor that rips through the room like a miniature earthquake. Cracks form wherever it travels, splitting glass from grout and stone from wood. The crystal chandeliers that decorate the ceiling—thousand-sided splendors of silver and glass, wondrous to behold in their candlelit grandeur—are now the first threat to the trapped crowds below, seconds away from plummeting to earth as the palace groans and spits and _shakes._

Then, all at once, everything stops. 

Someone is standing amidst the sea of broken glass, framed by the backdrop of the night sky outside. Someone both familiar and utterly strange, dressed head to toe in cascading gold silk. She has something in her hand—a teardrop-shaped top—that dangles from a string to a point past her hip. The tip of the toy is honed to a spike, dripping black to the polished floor. 

_"Chloe?"_

If he hadn’t known her so well, he wouldn’t have known her at all. Her skin is tinted a sickly yellow, and her eyes are the color of rotten wine. Her hair—still teased into fashionable curls—is a deep and almost lightless black. But the worst change of all is the pair of bejewelled wings that extends straight out from between her shoulder blades, stirring the still air in eerily perfect time. 

“Hello, hello, _hello_. Ladies, gentlemen, scoundrels.” Her voice is changed as well, thin and reedy and brittle, thrumming with the worst intentions imaginable. “My name is Queen Wasp, and I’ll be your new host. Now that _I’ve_ arrived, this miserable party can finally get started.”

“Chloe,” he chokes, “is that you? What are you _doing?_ ”

His stepsister takes him in with disinterest. No doubt it's Plagg's magic—some spell or glamor that stops him from being recognized while the ring is in use—but a part of him knows that she’d show him no mercy, even if it was Adrien who stood before her. 

“What am I doing? What are all of _you_ doing?” She spreads her hands in a theatrical sweep. “Why is there no music? Why is there no _dancing?_ Fakes and flatterers, every last one of you. Don't you know how to act in the presence of _royalty?_ "

Sauntering forward, she begins to twirl her wrist, whirling the top in a slow, hypnotizing arc. 

“Don’t you think so, Princess Marinette? There can only be one queen at court.”

Frightened murmurs crest like waves as the cornered nobles skitter towards the walls. Only Chat remains where he is. He plants his feet, blocking Chloe's path, and sets his hand on the hilt of the rapier that feels like a toothpick strapped to his hip. 

Can he even _use_ it? It’s been years since he held a sword. He can barely stand up to Lady Bourgeois—how can he possibly win against _this?_

"Just a moment.”

Marinette steps to the side, halfway out of Chat's shadow, and lifts her palm in a staying gesture. 

"Something happened that hurt you, Chloe. You were thinking about it when the magic overtook you.” Her tone is kind, as though she’s soothing a skittish horse. “Don't take your anger out on my guests. Just tell me who wronged you, and I'll make it right."

The marble lurches beneath Chat's feet. By contrast, Marinette stands steady as a bulwark, as though her skin is steel beneath her voluminous pink dress. She takes a step forward, placing herself beside him, her outstretched arm a protective barrier. 

"Tell me," she says. Her words are gentle, but her shoulders are square, and her face is devoid of a single speck of fear.

For a moment, Chloe seems to consider it. Behind the striped mask, her eyes grow cloudy, and her mouth twists in consternation. The expression is so utterly familiar that Chat can't help but flinch to see it. 

Then ultraviolet magic erupts about her face, gathering into a glowing symbol that hovers in place like a second mask. At once, she staggers, clutching her temples with both hands. A strangled noise grinds out of her, halfway between a snarl and a moan of pain.

"He’s talking to her," Marinette hisses. She whirls towards him, eyes wide with urgency. "I’m the one she wants. I have to lead her outside.”

"Where?"

"The gardens on the ground floor. If I could just—"

Whatever Marinette is about to say, it's cut off by the guttural shriek that rips out of Chloe with the force of a summer gale. The glowing sigil intensifies in brightness, until the heat of it consumes all the oxygen in the room. Chloe doubles over, but only for an instant. Then she snaps upright like a wooden marionette, her legs bent as she prepares to lunge. 

His senses return to him, and he shifts into motion. Dimly aware of the ease with which he does it, he grabs Marinette and sweeps her off her feet, bunching her skirts at the backs of her knees.

As Chloe whirls to keep him in her sights, he swerves to the side and makes a beeline for the windows. His clothes are slicked to his back with sweat, but his feet cross the room in a heartbeat and a half, and a wall of night air breaks over him like a stormfront.

Chat doesn't _think._

He just runs, cushioning the back of Marinette's head with his hand as she cries out in shock and fear and alarm, holding her close and careful and safe as he veers towards the first broken window—

—and _leaps._

  


* * *

  


As the ground rushes towards them, dew-wet grass and manicured flower beds a rapidly approaching blur beneath his boots, Chat comes to the stark realization that he may have just committed regicide.

But even as he thinks it, his body moves, muscles shifting with the confidence of clockwork. He angles himself into the rising wind, pointing his feet at the ground like a dagger-tip, claws catching in the threads of Marinette’s ball gown. Her face is sheet-white all the way down, but she doesn't scream—just wraps her arms around his neck and tucks her head against his shoulder, curling herself against him as they brace for impact. 

_WHUD._

Chat doesn't even stumble. 

He hits the ground running, and the scenery blurs by at lightning speed as he sprints across the lawn towards the cover of the gardens.

"How—" Marinette gasps, gutted with exertion— "How did you do that?"

"I don't know," he stammers. Adrenaline and terror tighten his throat as his pulse increases to the pace of his pounding feet. "I don't know, your Highness, I'm just glad that I did."

"You jumped out of a window two stories up and landed on your feet. Are you—" She gulps a breath, shuddering and wrecked. "You _are_ , aren't you? You’ve been gifted a miraculous. Just like—"

The sound of shattering glass interrupts her, and Chat cranes his neck just in time to see a sleek silhouette vault out the adjacent window. 

"Chloe's coming after us. I need a plan, princess."

The stunned expression fades from her face, and her eyes harden, keen as frost.

"Lead her into the hedges. We can lose her there long enough to fetch help.”

Ducking through an archway framed by sleeping roses, he follows her directions down the neatly paved walkways. Regal stands of cypress and yew form the bulk of the topiary that hems them in, shading paths that meander their way past private alcoves and open squares. Their evergreen branches are festooned with garlands, and the air is heavy with the scent of winter flowers. It's nothing less than ethereal—or would be, if they weren't fleeing for their lives from the magical abomination that used to be his sister.

"Turn right here. There's a hidden arbor just inside the outer wall." Marinette squeezes his shoulder, squinting through the dark. "We’ll hide in there until she makes her way past.”

"There has to be some way to reverse the enchantment.”

"Yes, but to do that, you'll have to get close to her." She clambers out of his arms and ducks through a screen of ivy, revealing the shadowed recess behind it. "The sorcerer behind the akuma uses items as anchors. It'll be something that belongs to her, probably something she’s wearing. Breaking it is the only way to wake her up.”

"How can we tell what it is?"

"We can't. We have to guess." Despite the shallowness of her breathing, Marinette's voice is hoarse with certainty. "I don't know who you are, Chat Noir, but her power won't be limited like yours. Even if you could stave her off, she won't stop fighting until she's dead or dispossessed." 

Chat gulps. He already knows what the object will be, if it has anything to do with the trigger for her possession. His sister’s metamorphosis into an akuma had fused her party mask to her face; had melted her dress to her seething skin; had forged her silks into skintight armor. Only the bracelet is still intact, beaming from her slender wrist like a beacon. 

"If I break the object—" He hunkers down against the latticework behind him, trying to calm his birdlike breathing. "If I break it, she'll be fine, right? She'll come back to her senses?"

"It's too dangerous, Chat. Wait here with me. When the coast is clear, we’ll run for help." 

"I know Chloe Bourgeois,” he insists. “Someone has to stall her, and it should be me.”

"Do you?" she asks, her brow furrowing sharply. "How is it that you know her, exactly?"

A branch snaps in the courtyard outside, signaling Chloe's airborne arrival. He shuffles another few inches back from the tangled undergrowth that keeps him hidden. 

"She’s someone I care about. I can’t say more than that, your highness, I’m sorry.”

"Where did you come from? How long have you had magic? Who is the girl that you came here to find?" Without a trace of propriety, she seizes his shoulder. "I need to know, _please_. On my life, you can trust me."

That voice could be _hers_ —and so could those eyes—and so could those freckles, that mouth, that hair. She’s no less kind and no less clever; no less fearless in the face of danger. All of Ladybug's oh-so-innocent stories come surging back through the annals of Chat’s memory; each one ringing of truth, like prophecy.

But how can he be _certain?_

He can’t, is the simple, _infuriating_ answer. With enough time—enough care—he could tease certainty out of her. But Marinette is out of time, and Chloe is out of patience, and Chat—as _always_ —is fresh out of luck. 

“I know, princess. You’ll get your answers soon. But if I tell you who I am, and Chloe manages to catch you...” He swallows, hard, and pitches his voice low. “Now isn’t the time. You need to focus on getting somewhere safe.”

Marinette’s face crumples in frustration, but she nods, a terse little jerk of her head. 

“Don’t go anywhere until I get back. _Promise_ me, Chat.”

Chat shifts his weight to the arches of his feet, reaching for the rapier strapped to his belt. In one deliberate motion, he draws it from its hilt, balancing the unfamiliar blade against his wrist. 

_Perfect_ , he thinks faintly. Like it's been forged to fit his hand. 

“The royal guard will be combing the grounds looking for me.” Marinette gathers up her many-tiered skirts, bunching the fabric around her waist. "Queen Wasp will attack as soon as I'm in the open. If I distract her, can you sneak up behind her and buy me time to run?”

“I’ll try.”

“Don’t _try_. Tell me that you can do it, Chat Noir.” Radiating authority despite the leaves in her hair, she lifts her chin and stares him down. “Tell me you’ll be here, alive and well, when I return.”

Chat rises, sweating through his gloves, fingers clammy around his sword grip. As though on cue, his senses sharpen, bringing leaves and grass into stark relief. The staccato click of Chloe’s footsteps finds his ears with crystal clarity, and he swallows again, sulfur and salt. 

This was what he wished for, wasn't it? To be with Ladybug in Paris. To wage war on everything capable of hurting her. To ease some part of the monstrous burden that sat so heavy upon her shoulders: the weight of a city, a kingdom, a _throne._

“I can do it, princess. I’m going to be just fine, I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she answers, soft. 

Marinette ducks out of the bower first. Chat goes second, low to the ground, footsteps muffled by the matted grass. He smells Queen Wasp before he sees her: the stench of raw magic; like mercury coating the air, overriding the scent of herbs and soil. 

She's next to the fountain in the center of the courtyard, squarely between Chat and the garden exit. Her back is turned to him, offering a clear view of her wings, which beat the air rhythmically to keep her airborne. The toes of her boots just barely skim the pavestones; and she holds herself perfectly, flawlessly still as she scans the circle of trees around her. 

_Listening_ , he realizes. _She can’t see me in the dark._

A rustle sounds from the other side of the clearing. A moment later, Marinette emerges, sparkling slippers dangling in hand. She must have removed them for surer footing, but the way the crystal collects the light works just as well to catch Chloe’s attention. 

“Chloe Bourgeois! I’m over here.”

Queen Wasp pivots to face her, slow and smooth as a midair dancer.

“There you are,” she purrs. “No need to be frightened, your royal Highness. I swear to you I’ll make this—”

“Oh, Chloe. Attempted murder is a bad look on you.” Marinette winds back her throwing arm as Chat creeps forward, circling the fountain. “You really should have stuck to salting my soup, because no amount of darkest arte can get that color to bring out your eyes.” 

She hurls the glass slipper directly at Chloe’s head. It goes well clear of her, sailing past the fountain and smashing to pieces in the bushes beyond, but it’s enough to keep her looking in the opposite direction.

“And _you!_ Black magician. I know you can hear me, you cringing prick.” Marinette raises her voice. “How many times have you _tried_ this now? How many times has the Hero of Paris sent you skulking away with your tail between your legs?”

She backs away as Chloe advances on her, taking small steps in her cumbersome dress, deliberately looking anywhere but Chat as he crosses the courtyard in long, silent strides. 

“That’s right, sorcerer. Do your worst. You couldn't figure out how to conjure competence if it jumped you in the dark and rode you like a broodmare.”

Chat lunges. With a horrifying sound—like ripping paper—the point of his rapier punches clean through the jewel-bright membrane of Queen Wasp’s wing. 

Chloe’s scream goes off like a gunshot. The sound erupts in Chat's enhanced hearing, nausea thickening in the knot of his throat. She topples, and he topples alongside her; hitting the ground on his still-sore shoulder as they roll across the pavement together.

The second slipper clatters to the ground as Marinette turns tail and bolts for the exit. Barefoot and white-faced, she hurtles past. The last that Chat sees of her is the flash of her silver crown, glinting in the darkness as she vanishes from sight, a pale spark of color in the all-consuming night.

  


* * *

  


Queen Wasp is pummelling him, raining blows against his ribs, spitting venom into his face as he hurls his sword away and grabs her by the wrists with all his might. 

His life might depend on it, but he can’t run her through. He can’t let the royal guard do it, either. Not even if she fights him with a strength more than human—not even if her eyes, glossy and unfocused, are brimming with hatred of a like he’s never seen.

"Who _are_ you?" she snarls. He wonders if it's Chloe speaking, or if it's her puppeteer’s words coming out of her mouth. "How _dare_ you touch me? Get the hell off me. I'll tear you to shreds."

She grabs for the top. He swipes it out of reach. Her fingers rip at his coat in retaliation, trying to find purchase in the vulnerable skin beneath. Chat flinches backwards, bracing for the pain; but the magical silk sheds blows like water, bunching and thickening as she attempts to claw through it.

Sending silent thanks in Plagg’s direction, he plants his knees on either side of her hips and hooks his finger beneath the string of Ladybug's bracelet.

" _No!_ " She claws at his eyes, and he jerks out of reach. “Don’t touch that, I need it! It’s my brother’s, don’t _touch_ it!”

"Chloe,” he gasps, “just hold still and let me help you.”

"Don't take it away from me! Don't, please, you're hurting me!" Her voice rises in a pitiful shriek. The violet magic flares around her eyes, accompanied by a stench like burning hair. "Stop it! It hurts! You'll kill me, stop it, _please!_ "

Chat freezes, staring down into his stepsister’s face. His breath is too loud, reverberating in his skull, as though it’s trapped inside his bloody mouth. And then—all at once—he can't breathe at all. His chest is too tight, his heartbeat too fast, horror roiling in the straitjacket of his skin.

"I didn't mean to," he stammers. "I wasn't trying to—"

_You're my son, Adrien. I would never try to hurt you._

It's in that moment of hesitation—a moment that collapses around them like sand, that splinters to the touch like broken glass—that Queen Wasp snatches her top from the grass, folding almost in two as she shoves off the ground and lunges for his neck in a killing slash. 

On instinct alone, Chat jerks away. Only the high cut of his collar saves him, the point of the weapon catching him beneath the jaw and nicking the skin in a hairline cut. 

Pure adrenaline wipes out fear. Too shocked to balk a second time, he grabs Chloe's wrist, slams it to the ground, and rips off the charm in one furious yank. 

A tiny part of him shrinks with misery—but there’s no time to grieve the only gift his lady has ever been able to give him, because the very _instant_ the bracelet breaks, a viscous mass of purple-black _something_ comes bubbling out like boiling water. 

It coalesces into a small, winged shape, flitting towards the sky in an attempt to escape. He lunges after it, snatching it out of the air, terror drying his tongue in his mouth as he puts his full strength into crushing it to pulp. 

_Please_ , he begs silently. _Please, please, please._

He barely feels the kinetic heat that starts in his palm and spreads to his fingers—barely feels the electric spark that grows to lightning in the seam of his hands—barely feels anything at all but fear.

When he opens his fist, the akuma is gone. The palm of his hand holds only ash—so fine that it could almost be mistaken for diamond; so fine that it scatters in the nighttime breeze, dusting Chat's gloves in inky black.

As the magic releases his sister into his arms—whole and breathing, white as wax—all that Chat Noir is capable of thinking is that it looks like cinders, staining his hands.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Chloe,” he says weakly, “you know that isn’t true.”
> 
> “What would you know? You don’t even know me. I’d rather he be _miserable_ and stuck with me forever than happy without me, somewhere far away."

Shaking with exertion in the night-cool grass, he holds onto Chloe as the magic leaves her. 

In moments, her armor melts away to loose silk, and the rosy hue returns to her skin. Her forehead is damp, and her eyes are unfocused, darting behind her darkened lashes. He hauls her up and lays her down gently, setting her limp hands on either side of her body. Savior or no savior, Chloe would wring his neck if she woke up to Chat Noir bleeding on her dress. 

Sure enough, she comes to swinging. As soon as her eyes open, she rockets upright, lurching away with a ghoulish shriek. 

"Guards! _Guards!_ Where am I? Someone help!”

Chat scoots away from her, resisting the urge to touch the nick on his neck. A slow stream of blood trickles down the line of his throat and pools in the gap created by his collar, but he can tell that the cut is a graze, nothing more. 

"There was an akuma attack, Mademoiselle Bourgeois. But don't panic, everything is dealt with. You're safe, and the princess is safe, and help will be here soon."

Chloe pauses in her theatrics. She stares at Chat with narrowed eyes, and a confused crinkle appears in her brow.

"The princess?" she asks, as though he's speaking to her in Latin. "What about her? You've seen her? Where's the akuma? Is it still in the palace?"

A slick wave of trepidation plasters his tongue to the roof of his mouth. 

"The last thing I remember is fixing my hair in the powder room. Someone spoke in my ear, and it sounded like a _man_ , but there was no one next to me when I—" Chloe blinks at the fairy-lit foliage above her. "What's going on? How did I get here? Why don't I..."

He bites his lip, trying not to flinch at the dawning horror on her face. 

"Oh god,” she says faintly. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

"It’s over now. Marinette wasn't hurt."

" _Marinette_?" repeats Chloe, like he's struck her with a mallet. "I turned into an akuma and attacked _Marinette_?”

With a hysterical little whimper, she crumples into a ball. Chat edges towards her, desperate to comfort her; to do something kind, something warm, something _useful._

“Chloe—may I call you Chloe? Can you remember anything at all from the time you were possessed? "

“I don’t know. I don’t _know_. It’s—blurry, like I was dreaming. He said something like—said he could help me—said he could make everything better, if I just—”

“Stay calm, alright? It wasn’t your fault.” He creeps forward again, trying to gauge how close he can get before she jumps away like a startled cat. “Did the sorcerer _tell_ you to hurt Marinette?”

“I don’t know! He must have done. I don’t—I can’t remember.” Visibly hyperventilating, Chloe grabs her face in both hands. “I swear to God, I would never touch her. I mean, she _hates_ me, but that doesn't mean I—”

"The princess? Why?"

“We were _twelve!_ How the hell was I supposed to know better? Nobody took her seriously back then!” He's never seen his sister so panicked. “Everyone knew her mother was a commoner. No one thought she’d present at court, let alone be named the royal heir.”

 _Ladybug’s mother was a baker,_ chimes the needling voice in the back of Chat’s head. But Chloe presses on, increasingly frantic, and he’s forced to push the memory aside.

“It’s different now. They all adore her. Everyone thinks that Marinette Dupain-Cheng is so _beautiful_ and _gifted_ and _clever_ and _kind_.” She’s heaving now, as though she’s about to throw up, her complexion paling to a sickly grey. “My own goddamn _parents_ will be baying for my blood. Attempted treason is a capital offense.”

Stunned, he stares at her, his blood running cold. But Chloe’s usual dramatics are nowhere in sight. She rips off her mask and hurls it away, rumpled petticoats dragging in the dirt as she hugs her knees against her chest. 

"Chloe, they _wouldn't_. The princess will pardon you. She knows you weren't in control of your actions.”

"Look, you obviously know who I am, so you must know who my stepfather is, too." Chloe is quivering, as though she's about to cry—the way she cries for real, with blue, bitten lips. "For months now, he's been pushing King Dupain to publicly punish the perpetrators of the attacks. If he backs down for me, he'll lose all credit. Now that it's his heir at stake, the king is in no position to refuse."

Pure horror punches through his chest and fills his lungs like a flood of ice water. The numbness that overtakes him is practically pain, a throbbing pressure in the pit of his gut.

"What?" says Chloe, in response to his silence. "You think it matters that I’m family? It doesn’t. Not to Gabriel Agreste. He keeps his own son locked up like an animal."

She starts to sniffle, the sound of it muffled by lank blonde hair.

“This isn’t supposed to happen to me. I’m _supposed_ to meet some stinking rich fool, and they’re _supposed_ to be breathless at the sight of my beauty, and they’re _supposed_ to court me and gift me their estate and treat me like treasure until I'm a wrinkled old prune." The first real tears leak out of her eyes, and she blinks them back, crumpling against her knees. "I’m supposed to marry rich and powerful so I can take my brother out of that house.”

A thick wad of guilt clogs up Chat’s throat, and he swallows to stop himself from choking. Fortunately, Chloe is too caught up to notice, hunched up small in her soiled golden dress. 

"Nobody is going to want me now. Adrien probably hates my guts."

“Chloe,” he says weakly, “you know that isn’t true.”

“What would you know? You don’t even know me. I’d rather he be _miserable_ and stuck with me forever than happy without me, somewhere far away."

She starts to cry, completely silent, charcoal bleeding down her pale cheeks.

"No wonder he tried to leave without telling me. Even he can see that I’m poison.”

If only he was Adrien right now, he could usher Chloe into his arms and rub circles into her back until the worst of it passed. He isn't, and he can't, so he fists his foolish hands. But just as he opens his mouth to speak, a thunderous sound cleaves the air in two, ringing through the garden and the gaps between the trees until it sets his very bones in motion. 

_The clock._

Breath short, eyes blurring, he counts the chimes. First three, then six, then nine—

—then twelve.

A terrible knowledge stirs within him. It spells its warning into the spaces between his joints; the dark behind his eyelids and the hollow of his mouth. The ring burns his finger like a glowing ember. With a certainty too abrupt to be anything but spellspun, he knows that Plagg is toiling inside it, pouring every last drop of power into keeping the magic that masks him intact. 

Everything inside him revolts at the thought of leaving Chloe behind on her own. But if he doesn’t go _now_ —go as swiftly as he came—the entire royal army will see him unmasked. Even if Marinette is his lady in hiding—and that’s an _if_ so utterly unthinkable his scattered wits can barely grasp it—she can’t save him from certain exposure.

“He’ll come for you, Chloe. Believe me, he’ll come.” He rests a gloved hand on Chloe’s shoulder. “He won’t leave you behind, and he won’t let them hurt you. I swear it on my mother’s grave.”

Chloe shivers, but she doesn’t look up. She barely seems to have heard him at all. 

There’s nothing more that Chat can do. Clasping his hand to the cut on his neck, he sets his shoulders against the wind and runs.

  


* * *

  


Chat Noir runs until his lungs cave in, until his feet are anchors at the ends of his legs, until the city air fills his nose with smoke and pricks at the corners of his burning eyes.

The sky overhead is nearly starless. Just as predicted, it’s begun to snow, but the falling flakes are almost invisible except in the glow of the lamps that line the square. His cheeks and ears and lips are frostbitten, the only part of his body not sheathed in black.

Time is quicksand, dragging him down in its grasp, gathering like cobwebs on the surface of his skin. With one last rush of static magic, his transformation collapses around him. 

A moment later, he’s Adrien once more. His silks are gone, replaced by his cloak, bruises from the fight already blooming beneath his clothes. He looks at his hands, bare in the winter cold, and swallows the ache that rises to his throat at the sight of his cracked and calloused fingers. 

To his immense relief, the coach is still parked. He yanks open the door and scrambles inside, half-expecting it to disintegrate around him. But just as before, the carriage creaks to life, and its elegant wheels erupt into motion as Adrien collapses on the velvet seat. 

The ring cools upon on his finger, and Plagg reappears in a burst of green light.

“Kitten, what’s wrong?! What’s going on?!” He whirls about wildly, taking in the dark compartment. “I felt you use my Cataclysm. What happened? Was there an attack?”

Adrien pants for breath, chest and shoulders heaving, trying to track his racing thoughts as Plagg zips over to his side.

“Kitten, what happened? Was Ladybug not there?”

“She was there,” he gulps. The pounding in his skull makes it impossible to think. “She was _there_ , Plagg, I know it, I _felt_ it—but the akuma— _Chloe_ —I can’t—I have to—”

“Adrien, slow down. Tell me one thing at a time.” Plagg pats his cheek with a miniature paw. “Did you find her or not? Do you know who she is?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” says Adrien, his voice breaking pathetically. “The only person it could have been was the princess. She insisted on dancing with me, and she told me—she said that—”

“The _princess_?” Plagg wheezes. “ _Marinette Dupain-Cheng_?”

“She told me she was waiting for the boy she was in love with. And she knew I had a miraculous—she called it by name.”

“There’s no way she could have known that unless she saw you use my magic.”

“There was an akuma, Plagg. My stepsister, Chloe. I fought her—I _saved_ her—but she’s—” His memories of the dance and everything that came after are jumbled together in a hodgepodge of emotion; hope and excitement and swift, consummate horror; the memory of Marinette wrapped up in his arms bound up in the memory of her sprinting from the gardens, her glass slipper abandoned in the grass behind her. 

One night. All he'd wished for was _one night._

As soon he thinks it, self-loathing overwhelms him. How can he pity himself at a time like this? After _ruining_ Chloe’s life beyond any possible repair? If he’d just held onto the bracelet; if he’d hidden the stolen clothes; if he’d kept his mouth _shut_ like he’d always been told—

“Chloe is guilty of treason,” he says, in a voice that shakes like falling leaves. “If the king has her executed, it’ll be all my fault.”

Plagg presses himself against his cheek, small and warm and reassuringly real.

“Adrien, you’re trembling. Take a breath and listen to me.” The thought of being comforted makes Adrien want to implode. He doesn’t _deserve_ comfort, but he obeys nonetheless, taking a slow breath through his chattering teeth. 

“Give me the food that’s in your pockets. If I eat, I’ll be able to transform you again.” Plagg is speaking clearly and slowly, searching his face for comprehension. “We’ll go back to the palace and find out for certain if Ladybug is the princess. If anyone can save your sister, it’s her.”

“But Plagg—” Numbly, Adrien rummages through his pockets, producing the cheese and apples he’d stowed away earlier. “The entire ballroom saw us dance. Everyone back at the palace will be looking for me.”

“Don’t worry about that. You can’t be recognized while you’re transformed."

“My father knew that Ladybug invited me. If I’m not in the cellar when he gets home tomorrow, he’ll definitely figure out what happened.” His head is a little bit clearer now, but he can’t control the trembling in his hands. It’s so intense he can barely break the cheese, paired with a peculiar weakness of grip. “He’ll realize I’m Chat Noir, and he’ll—he’ll punish me by taking you away from me. I’m certain of it.”

Already stuffing his mouth, Plagg snorts.

“Oh, kid, I’d like to see him try.”

“Even if he doesn’t, he’ll tell the king who I am.” The trembling won't _stop_. It can’t be normal. He knows the weight of panic when it squats on its chest, and _this_ —this awful _weakness_ —is something brand new. He shoves it into a drawer in the back of an imaginary room, to be pulled out and examined when the crisis is over. 

“What if it gets back to the sorcerer behind these attacks? He could turn me into a monster, just like my sister."

He holds his breath in anticipation, praying that Plagg will contradict him—whip out some figment of magical wisdom with the power to stay the course of logic. But Plagg is quiet, his whiskers still, his tail drooping steadily towards the carriage floor. The silence sounds in his chest like a death knell. 

“I have to go home, don’t I? That’s the only way to make sure nobody learns who I am.”

“No,” says Plagg stubbornly. “I don’t want you to go back.”

“My father isn’t stupid. What other choice do I have?”

“You were starving when I found you, Adrien. You had a bruise the size of an egg on your cheek.”

Adrien rests his temple against the molded wooden wall. His head spins in protest, a weight at the end of his neck. He closes his eyes and breathes through his nose, but the tightness in his chest persists, as though a seed in his stomach has sprouted shoots through his throat. 

“I’ve had worse,” he mumbles—which is certainly a thought he should have kept to himself, because Plagg tunnels into his cloak with a hiss. Despite his misery, he can’t help but feel touched. Plagg is the second person he's known who's shown him warmth instead of pity; whose eyes on him hold only kindness, none of the distaste he so often sees in the tepid faces of his father’s guests.

“It’ll be alright,” he says, with a steadiness far from what he feels. “Now that I’m Chat Noir, nobody can keep me locked up. I’ll make my way to Ladybug eventually, or she’ll make her way to me.”

Plagg curls up beside his collarbone. 

“If Ladybug really is the princess, there’s no way she’ll be able to sneak out of the palace.”

“If she can’t come herself, then she’ll send the royal guard. Or one of her fellow rangers. She’ll send for me, Plagg. She’ll come up with _something_.”

“It’s not like your father can _prove_ you’re Chat Noir. If he opens his mouth, we’ll turn him to ash.” Plagg’s voice is flat as dust, skimming the surface of genuine threat. “You worked so hard to get out of that house. Why take the risk? What if something goes wrong?”

“Because,” says Adrien—ribs taut; stomach churning; eyes stinging, but dry as bone— “Because if my father retracts his position, then Chloe won’t be prosecuted. I have to convince him to help her, and I can only do that as myself.”

There’s a long quiet in the too-big compartment, held in place by the heavy drapes that hang above the windows like moss. The city centre is behind them now, and it’s too dark to see his shaking hands. Every so often, they pass a bright window that scatters light like drops of oil; but for the most part, they sit together in shadow. 

“Oh, kitten,” says Plagg, uncharacteristically subdued. “I’m sorry I made such a mess of your wish.”

“No,” says Adrien, with a vehemence that startles him. “I’ll never stop being grateful for what you did. And I wouldn’t give up being Chat Noir for anything.”

Plagg wriggles up to his downturned collar and scrunches against his neck, a hot ball of tension. Adrien hesitates only a moment before lifting a hand and cupping it to his skin.

“I’ll be the best holder you’ve ever had,” he whispers. It’s as much of a promise to himself as it is to Plagg. “Everything will work out in the end. I swear.”

The coach rumbles forward through the slowly drifting snow, and the rest of the journey goes without speaking.

  


* * *

  


By the time the carriage creaks to a stop in the deep darkness of the empty woods, the shaking has progressed to his entire body. 

Adrien orders himself not to dwell on it. It is freezing, after all, and his coat and cloak are a few winters too short. The snow hasn't yet reached the forest floor through the black tracery of branches overhead, but judging by the bite of the rising wind, the weather will last a while yet. 

Rena’s black horses stand perfectly still as Adrien disembarks from the coach. The snow doesn't catch in their braided manes, and their breath doesn't warm his icy hands when he carefully rubs each one behind the ears. 

"Will you come with me?" he asks Plagg. "Or are you staying in the woods?"

"I stay with the ring. You can't get rid of me that easily."

"Thank you," says Adrien, because he hears the reassurance therein—and because he's grateful when Plagg clambers up and tucks himself away in the fabric of his hood. 

The walk across the meadow should have been easy, even in the dark and the inclement weather. But Adrien’s feet are heavy as sin, dragging him earthward like the currents of a river. It takes either a lifetime or several slow heartbeats to slog his way across the stiff, crackling grass, the distance masked by his dimming eyes. 

When, at last, he lets himself in through the courtyard gate, Plagg swats his cheek to get his attention. 

"You should keep the miraculous in easy reach. But make sure you hide it where your parents won't find it."

Adrien tugs the ring off his finger and slips a hand inside his coat, to the invisible pocket formed by a burst seam. But when his fingers poke into it, they find something else—something shaped of polished metal, small and smooth and icy to the touch. 

It's the ring that Chloe gave him when she was dressing him for the ball. The one with the emerald and the band of carved gold, a perfect match to her father’s finery. Was it really less than a lifetime ago? He remembers doing turns in front of her boudoir mirror while she buttoned his waistcoat and mussed his hair, but the memory feels like it belongs to someone else. 

"Adrien," says Plagg, a question in his tone. Adrien withdraws his hand from his coat. 

"Come on," he says softly. Crouching in front of the cellar, he yanks the door open. The metal handle is so cold it burns, and the effort cuts his breath newly short. 

"You don't have to go down there just yet. There's still a few hours until anyone will be here."

"I’ll be fine, Plagg, it's just for a bit longer." He knows the little god means well, but if he doesn't lock himself in while he can, he'll wind up bolting like a wild beast. His breath turns to icicles in the cavity of his chest as he stares down the staircase, willing himself to move. 

"We'll have news by tomorrow," he says to the darkness. "I'll make my father see sense. I'm certain."

Before he can lose the last of his nerve, he makes his way down the narrow staircase and swings the cellar door shut behind him.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don't want you to go," he gulps. "I don't want to face my father on my own."

It’s only a small eternity before the door creaks open, and the cellar is flooded with morning light. 

Adrien winces and slumps against his arms. Despite his best efforts, he hasn’t slept much. Scrubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, he slides down the wall in an attempt to make himself look like he's been keeping the pickling barrels company all night. 

He'd braced himself to see Lady Bourgeois. But it's Sabrina who stands at the top of the stairs, holding the ring of heavy brass keys his stepmother keeps at the belt around her waist. Her bright shock of hair is loose around her shoulders, and she's wearing a green dress that looks to be her own instead of her usual crisply-pressed uniform. 

"Adrien," she starts as she clatters down the staircase. Slowly, Adrien gets to his feet, bracing a palm against the wall for support. Plagg, who'd been asleep in the breast of his tunic, stirs to wakefulness but keeps himself still. 

"Sabrina?” he says weakly. “What’s going on? Where are my parents?”

Sabrina stops at the bottom of the stairs. Her face is so pale that her freckles look like moles, and her eyes are huge and dark with fear.

"There's been news from Paris. The palace was attacked by an akuma last night." 

Adrien widens his eyes dutifully. His face feels like clay, molded by a stranger, more like a mask than the one he’d worn last night. 

"The monster was outed as your sister Chloe. Under sorcerous influence, she destroyed the hall of mirrors and threatened her royal Highness' life." Sabrina clutches at her skirts. "By the time the king's army arrived to contain her, she had recovered her senses. She's being held under guard at the palace prison."

"What are they going to do to her?" he asks. All at once, Sabrina's face crumples, and a beat of pure fear sounds its toll in Adrien’s chest.

"Sabrina?" he repeats. "Is she safe? What’s going to happen to her?”

His skin crawls with dread as Sabrina turns aside, nervously adjusting the bridge of her spectacles. From her hesitation, he can tell that she's choosing her words carefully. 

"Look, Adrien. Your sister and the princess have never been friends. They used to squabble all the time as children, before Marinette took her place at court." She glances at him from behind her glasses. "Still, her Highness has never been spiteful. She'll take the position she always has: that the akumas can't be blamed for their actions.”

She pauses, as though expecting a question. When Adrien says nothing, she continues, wringing her hands. 

"Others will call for Chloe to be punished. This time, I’m afraid that his Majesty will listen." Her voice drops lower and lower with each word. "The king loves his daughter more than he loves his own life, and he won’t take risks with her safety in the balance. Not even if Marinette herself says otherwise.”

Nausea bubbles anew in his heaving stomach. He'd hoped against hope that Chloe had been mistaken; that the princess' forgiveness, however strained, would be enough to see his sister released. 

"There must be something we can do to help her," he says, his voice cracking apart like the bark on a tree. "I have to talk to my father. When is he getting back?"

Sabrina looks back at him in that green-eyed way of hers, tongue pressed up to the inside of her cheek. 

"It’ll probably take him a couple of days. It's been snowing all night, and the roads aren't safe."

"A couple _days?_ " says Adrien, suddenly winded. His mouth is drier than desert sand. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime?”

“All we _can_ do is carry on as usual. Your parents will send word if they require anything from us.” 

“But Sabrina, don’t they need us _now_? If Chloe’s case might go to trial, then shouldn’t we be there to defend her?”

“We?” Sabrina echoes blankly. “Who on earth do you mean by _we?_ ”

“Well—” He wavers against his own will. “You and me, and Jean, and the staff. Nobody at court even knows what she’s like.”

In Adrien’s mind, it makes perfect sense—who better to speak in Chloe's defense?—but as Sabrina stares at him, lips pressed together, his confidence dwindles to a dusty trickle. 

“No wonder Chloe was always so worried. You’d think you grew up being raised by fairies, for all that you know about the world outside this house.”

Adrien’s mouth snaps shut like a trap. He feels—all at once, and with searing clarity—like his entire body has been crushed to the size of a pea. Like he’s small and simple and unforgivably foolish, eons away from the cat-eyed boy who had danced with Marinette in a hall of spun gold.

It must be plain to see on his face, because Sabrina sighs, and the line of her mouth softens. 

“I didn’t say it to insult you, Adrien.”

"I know," he replies, in a tiny voice.

“Of course I wish I could be with her now. I’d cut off my own hand to keep Chloe safe." Sabrina stares at her feet, blinking hard. “I know she'd no sooner do something so _stupid_ than lay in the street to be trampled by horses. But who’s going to listen to the likes of you and me? I’m just a maid, and you’re…”

She trails off tactfully, but the words have already been said. Adrien hardly needs to be reminded _exactly_ who and what he is. 

“The princess will protect her,” he says at last, instead of giving voice to the bitterness in the back of his throat. “No matter what Chloe did in the past, she’ll never stand by and watch her hang.”

“Convincing me won't help her, Adrien. Save it for your father and his councillor's vote." 

He opens his mouth to argue, but Sabrina has already recovered her composure. Smoothing the wrinkled folds of her dress, she straightens, shaking out her bright cloud of hair. Then—in a surprising gesture of concern—she lays the back of her hand against his forehead, frowning to herself at whatever she finds. 

"Come up to the house and eat before you faint. You look even more wrung out than usual.”

Adrien doesn't think he could eat if he tried, but it's the kindest Sabrina has ever been, so he allows her to wrap her arm around his shoulders and shepherd him out to the kitchen courtyard. 

If he stumbles on his way up—if his legs are shaking fit to collapse, folding like sticks as he slogs up the stairs—then Sabrina doesn't comment, and Adrien is grateful.

  


* * *

  


More news comes, none of it good. 

The story limps back to him, mangled by hearsay. He learns that Lady Bourgeois has rented a room in Paris, the better to maintain her presence at court while the council debates his sister's fate. He learns that a writ has been served to his father's household, forbidding the staff and servants from travelling. He learns—with a deep spike of dread in his chest—that Princess Marinette has been confined to her quarters, guarded by a twenty-four hour rotation of the finest soldiers the capital can offer. 

Lastly, he learns that riders in the king's colors took Paris by storm at the first light of dawn. When he plods into the kitchen just before noon, he finds his fellow servants clustered around the stove, poring over a flyer still damp with new ink. A few hours later, he sees it crumpled in the hearth, its edges charred and curling black.

BY THE KING, A PROCLAMATION  
His Royal Majesty King Tom Dupain & Queen Consort Sabine Cheng seek the present whereabouts of a recent guest to the royal palace. Described as a young man, alias Chat Noir, between sixteen and twenty years of age, tall and slim with fair hair and green eyes. A reward is offered to any French citizen who can supply the identity of the Princess’ protector. 

Adrien's stomach burns with acid. His mouth runs wet and dry at once. He stokes the fire with shaking hands, watching Chat Noir's familiar face crisp up at the corners and crumble to ash.

The rest of the day passes, and the next after that. 

For the first time in living memory, he doesn't have enough to do. He doesn’t have to heat Chloe’s bedroom until it's cosy, or bring her half a dozen different breakfasts, or tend to any of the other thousand demands that she usually invents in the course of a day. He sweeps out the dining room, but there’s no meal to be served. The house, like its inhabitants, is holding its breath; and Adrien moves through it like he’s drifting through a dream. 

The tremor in his muscles grows steadily worse, making his fingers wooden and his breath short. Barely slowing his pace, he pushes his way past it. He’s worked through coughs and temperatures before. He’s worked through sprains and broken bones. 

His only reprieve is Plagg, who keeps up a steady stream of chatter as Adrien slogs his way through his chores. He devours the food that he slips into his pockets, leaving scattered crumbs in the seams of his clothes. He tells terrible stories and equally terrible jokes. He listens with pricked ears and pointedly wide eyes as Adrien rehearses for his father's arrival, words turned to sludge by his waterlogged tongue. 

The morning of the third day dawns cold and bright, with daggers of ice dripping down from the gutters. Outside, the meadow is blanketed in white. Snow this early in winter is a rarity, and it almost never lingers on the ground for more than a day. The shin-deep snowdrift blocking the kitchen door is the perfect opposite of the miracle he needs. 

“Today should be the day that Monsieur Agreste returns.” Sabrina, arms crossed as she leans against the doorjamb, peers down at him where he sits in front of the hearth. “He’ll want to take advantage of the weather finally clearing.”

Adrien can’t answer. His skull is full of buzzing. He has a distant inkling that his eardrums are about to explode.

“Adrien?”

“Sorry,” he says faintly. “The fire won’t start.”

“Maybe the wood is wet? There’s seasoned logs in the shed.” She frowns with something adjacent to concern. “Are you sure you’re alright? Better to rest and do your work properly than do it so badly it needs to be redone.”

“It’s just a fever. Thank you, Sabrina.”

He ducks outside before she can question him, dragging his uncooperative feet through a lake of mud and melted snow. His pulse is slow, and his eyelids are heavy, and his toes have gone numb despite his thick woollen socks. It's cold outside, but not as cold as he feels—like his insides are home to a forest of frost, leeching every flicker and echo of warmth.

He pushes, pushes, pushes onward—and then, quite abruptly, he's flat on the ground. 

"Kitten?" Plagg is out of his pocket in seconds. "Kitten, are you alright? What happened? Did you trip?"

Adrien opens his mouth to respond—and nearly retches, the courtyard spinning around him. He can't remember ever being so cold. His vision swims and flickers, black on white on red.

"This isn't normal," says Plagg sharply. "Something's happening to you. It must be from the fight."

"The fight?" he mumbles. The wave of nausea peaks, then passes. The world uprights itself once more, and he finds himself awkwardly collapsed on his elbows, legs sprawled out in an incomprehensible tangle. 

"Is this—is this happening because of the miraculous?"

"No, Adrien. Your stepsister must have done something to you." Plagg flies around him in an agitated circle, hair standing up along the curve of his spine. "I need you to try and remember. Did she hit you with anything that might still be affecting you?"

He tries to sit up, and at once, the nausea returns. Against his own will, a whimper squeezes out of him. Hot and cold flashes rack his entire body, and he lets his forehead thud against his forearms, trying to get back enough breath to respond.

"Adrien?" Plagg flies down to him, crowding against his cheek, high-pitched with something approaching fear. “Come on, kitten, talk to me.”

"She nicked me," he mumbles, lifting a hand to his neck. He pulls down his collar to reveal the offending spot. "But the cut isn't deep. It barely even bled."

"When she turned into an akuma, what did she look like?"

Adrien lets his eyes fall shut. Lets his hand fall heavily into his lap. 

"She, she had wings? A gold and black dress? And a little wooden top, attached to a string like a toy. But she didn't call herself Chloe, she called herself—"

The memory of his sister in her golden regalia slips through his unresisting fingers. It’s replaced by another, equally wrenching: Chloe hunched over in the tatters of her ballgown, tears of mascara on corpse-white cheeks, saying in that tiny, hopeless voice—

( _Even he can see that I’m poison._ )

The air rushes out of his flattened lungs. His eyes and ears are filled with static, building and building to an avalanche of noise—blaming him, shaming him, a roar of remembered words. 

"She called herself Queen Wasp,” he rasps through chattering teeth. “Maybe Chloe was—maybe she had—”

Plagg presses his paw to the newly exposed cut, ears flat and eyes narrowed to slits. 

"Venom," he snarls. "Your sister had venom."

Adrien can’t think. He can’t see straight. Terror is swift and all-consuming, doubling the traitorous pace of his pulse—doubling the speed of the poison in his veins, making its unerring way to his heart. 

The sheer dumb _irony_ of it takes his breath away. So fitting, so _easy_ to be his father’s dirty secret, the boy who stoked fires in a house full of ghosts. But then he'd had the audacity to believe that he could be _happy_ ; that he could fall, eyes wide, into the love of a lifetime; that he could step into a life that was straight out of a fairy tale, with wild magic at his beck and call.

God, how he'd ached for it. How _stupid_ he'd been to hope for it. He’d reached for the shining thread of his future with everything wistful and wanting inside him—tooth and nail and heart and soul, muscle and marrow, blood and bone. 

Shouldn’t he know _better_ by now?

Shouldn’t Adrien _know_ his luck?

He backs himself up against the wall of the shed, ignoring the snow as it seeps into his clothes, and buries his face in his folded arms. 

"Ladybug can fix this," says Plagg, circling feverishly. "Her powers exist as the counterbalance to yours. Just as you can destroy, she can create, and she can heal."

"Plagg," he mumbles, "there's no way I can get back to Paris now."

"Then she'll just have to come to you instead. I don't give a stinky rind of brie if I have to fly across France, Cataclysm the palace, and lift her out of the rubble with a flock of golden storks."

A sound squeaks out of him—a pathetic little laugh—and Plagg zips up to hover beside his face, tail lashing behind him like a miniature propeller. 

"I'm serious," he hisses. "You stay here, and I'll go to Paris to tell her what’s happened.”

“But what if I’m wrong about Ladybug being the princess?” 

"It’s the best guess we’ve got. If she’s not Marinette, then why the hell hasn’t she shown up at court? Or made her way down to this dump site already? Just trust me, Adrien. I'll find her, and I'll bring her."

"But I don't—" says Adrien, before his throat locks up entirely. A small, irrational part of him recoils in horror at the thought of Plagg being anywhere but beside him. It's less than a week that the little god has been with him, but he already finds his company indispensable.

"I don't want you to go," he gulps. "I don't want to face my father on my own."

It's stupid and childish and— _cowardly_ , he knows. Being Chat Noir had made him bold, but he carried his fear of the man his father had become like an oozing splinter beneath his skin. Even now, with ice in his veins and rust creeping up through the corners of his vision, he’s more afraid of Gabriel Agreste than he is of simply falling asleep in the snow.

Plagg curls into a knot against the curve of Adrien’s cheek. A purr reverberates through his chest, like a tiny engine, comforting and warm. 

"I'll be back no later than nightfall," he whispers. "Whatever happens, Adrien, I’ll come back by nightfall. I _promise_ I’ll bring her and make her cure you. I won't lose you like I lost my last one."

There’s no comfort that Adrien can offer in response, so he simply cups him close and shakes.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Of course," he says, in a voice as brittle as glass. “I’d do anything to protect her.”
> 
> “Then what else could we possibly have to discuss?"

Gabriel arrives alone, clad in court dress, on a chocolate-colored horse whose flanks are wet with froth. 

Sabrina spots the horse from a second-story window and delegates last-minute tasks to the servants: lighting the candles in their silver sconces, heating clean water to be brought to the guest room. Jean weathers the snow to crank open the gates. It’s barely six, and the sun is low in the sky, spilling towards the horizon like a dripping yolk. All along the dark strip of the royal highway, the snow is soft and white as satin.

Adrien retreats to Chloe’s bedroom—the only place in the house where nobody will think to look for him—and waits. The tight wad of anxiety wedged in his throat has doubled in size since Plagg left for Paris, leaving him shaking and pacing in circles. It’s almost a relief when Sabrina finds him. Sharp and silent and pitying as always, she takes his elbow and tugs him into the hall. 

When Gabriel slams through the massive front doors, cloak billowing behind him in a gust of cold air, he hurries into the foyer with everyone else. His father seeks him out from all the way across the room; and Adrien, despite everything, stands straight in a hurry. 

"Upstairs," says Gabriel. He shrugs off his cloak and hands it to Sabrina, revealing his jacket and waistcoat beneath. A padded bag the size of a hatbox is strapped to his belt. Adrien darts it a nervous glance.

“ _Now_ , Adrien.”

He bows his head and hurries up the stairs, clutching the banister to keep himself upright. 

He stands in his father's office—with its upholstered chairs, its cobwebbed bookshelves, and its black-and-grey portrait of his fourteen-year-old self—for nearly twenty minutes before Gabriel arrives. Without so much as a glance in Adrien’s direction, he shuts the heavy door behind him and turns the bolt with a decisive click. 

Adrien's heartbeat thuds in his throat. 

In three lengthy strides, his father crosses the room, raising his hand to Adrien’s forehead.

“You’re feverish,” he says, and Adrien swallows. He can no more force his feet to move than he can will his skin to harden to stone.

“It’s just a cold, father. It’ll pass in a day.”

Gabriel turns aside, wiping his hand on his jacket, and crosses the room to his great mahogany desk. Gingerly, as though it contains something fragile, he takes the padded bag from his belt and rests it on the desktop. Then he gestures at the empty chair across from him, sinking to a seat with his back to the wall.

Adrien drops into it, shaky with relief. Without preamble, Gabriel begins.

“I assume you've been informed of Chloe’s arrest. You will be pleased to know that she is unharmed, for the time being, and being held in a safe place until the council comes to a conclusion.”

Adrien knows better than to interrupt, so he nods. 

“As lead councillor in the king’s investigation, I was the first civilian to arrive at the scene, soon after her Highness returned with the royal guard.” Gabriel adjusts the bridge of his spectacles. “I was the one who spoke to your sister. She claims not to remember anything that happened.”

He nods again. His throat is sore. His ears are filled with a terrible din.

“I found the remains of the charm that was used to enchant her, along with one of the slippers her Highness was wearing. No trace, strangely enough, of the boy who was with her.”

His father pauses, a weighted silence. Adrien waits a moment longer, then takes it as his cue to speak.

“Did Chloe have anything to tell me?” he asks timidly. “Were you able to see her? Do you know if she’s—”

“What did you say to her before she left?”

“Pardon?” says Adrien, and Gabriel raises his eyebrows. 

“She seemed upset during the trip to Paris. What did the two of you talk about the day of the ball?"

There’s no way to squirm out of telling the truth—or at least a partial version of it—so Adrien bites his tongue and braces. 

“I told her I wanted to stop living here,” he says hoarsely. “I said I was leaving and going to the city.”

“Is that all?”

“I think so?”

“You _think_ so? Why was she wearing your bracelet, Adrien?”

“Because—” He could hardly admit that the bracelet was Ladybug's, and that he'd begged his sister to speak to her on his behalf. “Because my stepmother took it, and she knew that it was important to me. I’m sorry, père, but why does it matter? Shouldn’t we be talking about what we can do to help her?”

At once, he knows that he’s said the wrong thing. The frozen sweep of Gabriel's gaze pins him in place like a moth to a corkboard, and Adrien chokes instead of breathing. 

“It _matters_ ,” says Gabriel, with painstaking precision, “because this is the first time in living memory a threat has breached the palace defenses. It _matters_ because Ladybug failed to appear in the moment His Majesty needed her most—when Marinette’s life was in mortal danger.”

Adrien shrinks away until he’s flush with the back of his chair, staring at his feet with hot, unblinking eyes. His throat and stomach are tied into knots. He doesn’t dare look up at his father. He doesn’t dare _think_ about the ring inside his coat, burning through his pocket with the heat of a live ember.

“The royal couple are beside themselves. Fearful for their throne, their people, their _child_. Hoping against hope that the young man from the ball can tell them what has befallen the huntress, or take up defence of the city in her absence.”

Gabriel slides his hand into his jacket and extracts a familiar parchment envelope. 

“But you know better, don’t you, Adrien? Ladybug was there in the ballroom that night. She gave you that _trinket_ so she'd know you in the crowd. She was trapped in their midst when the akuma arrived, unable to transform without exposing herself."

Setting the letter on the desk between them, he slides it forward so that Adrien can see it. "No wonder she refuses to appear at court, even with all of Paris in a panic."

“I’m sorry, father.”

“ _Are_ you?” asks Gabriel. Adrien shrinks further, dizzy with terror. His father hasn’t hit him yet. He hasn’t even raised his voice. It never seems to matter what Gabriel does, for the simple reason that it’s Gabriel who does it. 

With a sigh, his father settles backwards, draping his arm over the armrest of his chair. 

“Perhaps it's for the best,” he says, eyes narrowed. “I suppose a so-called servant of the people can bear to indulge herself with a houseboy, but I could scarcely withstand the embarrassment."

The clock is very loud in the silence that follows. Adrien inhales, slow and shaky, and swallows the poisonous lump in his throat. Even after all this time, a single sentence of his father's can split him open like a butcher’s knife. 

Very quietly, he says: “If you think she’s ashamed of me, you’re mistaken.”

Something in Gabriel’s expression shifts, but for once in his life, it isn't anger. It's something unnerving, sharp and knowing, like a cardsharp about to show his hand.

"So you say,” he replies. “And yet she has not been seen in the city ever since _Marinette_ was put under guard."

Adrien’s head snaps up in shock.

His skin, all at once, turns inside out.

_Surely_ , he thinks frantically. _Surely he can't know._ If Gabriel had even an _inkling_ of the fact that Ladybug and the princess were one and the same, he’d never have bothered returning to the chateau. He’d never have settled for anything less than outing Marinette to the king and queen. Everything Gabriel had done thus far—disowning Adrien, marrying his stepmother, abandoning his sister to the council’s judgment—he’d done for the sake of proximity to power. And who in France was more powerful than the king? 

His father would never betray the king's trust. He would never _dare_ put the princess at risk.

 _Surely,_ thinks Adrien, his heart like a stone in his throat. 

“King Dupain has no idea that the Hero of Paris was among his guests.” Gabriel drums his fingers on the arm of his chair, weighing him with his eyes like a fine bolt of fabric. “For your sister’s sake, I held my tongue. Should I expect that to change once Chloe is questioned?"

“What?” stammers Adrien, too shaken to stall. 

“Chloe’s case is going to trial. She’ll be compelled by law to recount the whole truth, including her actions the night of the ball.” His father bears down on him, relentless as a stormfront, as he struggles to retain some semblance of calm. “If you told her _anything_ about you and Ladybug, then the entire palace will know soon enough.”

“But—”

“Do you have any idea of the danger you’re in? What if this sorcerer is someone at court? It would cost him nothing to target you next.”

Adrien opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. His head is almost as empty as his lungs. He feels the world caving in around him, cold and black and absolute. 

“ _Well_ , Adrien?”

“She knew,” he mumbles, damningly faint. “She saw us together. She knew that Ladybug was at the ball looking for me.”

Gabriel is silent for a long, deadly moment. Adrien can't stand to look him in the eye. The anxious creature curled in his belly clambers upwards into his throat, filling his mouth with the taste of his own fear. Despite his resistance a minute earlier, his eyes are blurred by panicked tears. 

He waits for something to happen—a sound, or a snarl, or a strike—but the silence stretches on and on, vast as an ocean, utterly unassailable. 

At long last, Gabriel shifts forward, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. 

“I have tried to teach you responsibility,” he says. “I have _tried_ to teach you that your actions have consequences. Do you understand now, why I make the decisions I make? Why I simply can’t _trust_ you to keep yourself safe?”

“Yes,” says Adrien, his voice so low and numb with hurt he might as well not have spoken at all. “I understand, père.”

“Then tell me: how am I to even _begin_ undoing the damage you’ve done to your sister?” 

Every word lands like the stroke of a whip. The more he shrinks and makes himself small, the louder and surer Gabriel becomes, steering the course of his argument like a ship come in to port. 

“Chloe is going to be tried, whether I retract my position or not. And once your secret is exposed at court, it'll be nigh impossible to protect either one of you."

“There must be a way,” says Adrien weakly. Survival instinct shrieks in his ear, but the plea comes tumbling out nonetheless. “There has to be something that someone can do. You can ask Marinette—she can talk to the king—she can stop the trial from happening, or—”

Something twists in his father’s face, burning like a flare before it winks out of existence. It vanishes too quickly for Adrien to catch, but he stops, the words gone dry in his mouth. 

Gabriel pulls back and corrects his posture, regaining his composure as swiftly as he lost it. 

"Marinette can’t help you," he answers softly. “The man who tried to kill her has magic, Adrien. With Ladybug missing, the only way I can keep you from harm is to send you out of France altogether.”

The air freezes in Adrien’s lungs. He searches his father’s face for sympathy—for some sign of softness, some sign of _pity_ —but all he finds is vicious certainty. 

“Out of _France?_ ” he stammers, as though saying it aloud will somehow undo it. “But père, I’m not—I’m not even in the _city_.”

His father stares him down with the eyes of an executioner. His voice drops lower and lower by degrees, frigid as the wind against the window outside. 

“If you'd simply _listened_ to me, then none of this would have been necessary in the first place. You should have stayed inside the house where you were safe instead of throwing your life away for a girl you barely know.”

Something unthinkable happens, then. Perhaps it’s the ring—or the venom in his veins—or the fuzzy memory of cowering into the wall while his stepmother hit him, again and again and again. Perhaps it’s nothing more than blind animal hurt, the way any beast backed into a corner would eventually snap and show its teeth. 

“You’re out of your mind if you think I’ve ever been safe in this house.”

His throat locks up as soon as he says it, as though in a belated attempt to save him. But it's too late to turn back the clock on his tongue. He simply sits there, brain and body buzzing, waiting for the ground to split open beneath his chair and swallow him whole into the depths of the earth. 

But all that happens is that Gabriel shrugs—cold and immaculate, like the snow across the field. 

“If you really hate it here so much, then there’s no reason to delay your departure. You can leave tonight, while the weather is clear.”

Adrien can’t speak. His skin is drum-tight. His lungs are packed with gunpowder, waiting for the spark of a fuse.

“There is the matter of his Majesty’s writ, but that is easily dealt with.” Gabriel turns away from him deliberately, shifting his attention to the snowdrift of papers scattered across the desk in front of him. “You meant to run away to the city, did you not? I’ll tell your sister and anyone who asks that that’s exactly what you’ve done.” 

In the wake of Adrien’s horrified silence, he pauses. His eyes are opaque behind his glasses; and his face, as ever, is smooth as marble.

“Think about this rationally, Adrien. What does it matter that Ladybug loves you? Will you give up what it takes to protect her, or will you let her worst enemy use you against her?”

Adrien thinks he might be drowning. He's never felt so helpless as he does in this instant: not in four years of bruises and beatings; not in the cellar, blacked out behind his eyelids; not in the days and weeks and months after his mother disappeared into the depths of the forest. 

“Of course," he says, in a voice as brittle as glass. “I’d do anything to protect her.”

“Then what else could we possibly have to discuss?"

In lieu of looking at his father, Adrien lets his gaze slide away. He looks at the window, at Ladybug’s letter, at the oddly shaped parcel sitting atop the desk. He looks at the patch on the sleeve of his coat. Lastly, he looks at the gold-plated ring that adorns the fourth finger of Gabriel's left hand: a gift from his mother, engraved with her name; never removed, let alone replaced, throughout all the years of Gabriel’s remarriage.

He swallows his hurt into the pit of his stomach.

He says, “I’ll pack.”

  


* * *

  


There isn't all that much to pack. Dressed in his winter cloak and boots, he quickly retrieves his favorite things. There's his good summer clothes, a couple of years old now, let out every spring in the hopes that he'd wear them. There's a watch with a gilt face and a burnished leather strap, a secret gift from Chloe on the night of his fifteenth birthday. There's a few of his old books—some from when he was little; some that he’d squirrelled away from his mother’s possessions. He'd hidden his treasures all around the house: beneath pried-up floorboards and piles of old sheets; in the wall of Chloe's closet; at the dusty backs of shelves. Anything he couldn’t stand to see sold or broken or burned. 

If only he'd done the same with the outfit. Maybe Chloe would still be here. Maybe he’d be with his lady _right now_ , not hoping against hope that she'd ride to his rescue before Gabriel smuggled him out of the country. 

Or maybe Plagg would never have found him. Maybe the sorcerer would have sent a different agent, and Marinette would have died without Chat Noir to save her. Maybe he'd still be standing here now, bag in his arms and bitterness in his mouth, without even hope to see him through the night. 

He doesn't have time for _maybes_ right now. Slinging the satchel over his shoulder, he descends to the foyer to meet his father. 

"I've given Jean his instructions," says Gabriel, sparing him a glance from the corner of his eye. "If you travel through the night, you should reach the border by sunrise. You'll be safe to stay there a couple of days while I send for your documents."

"Where am I travelling to?" Adrien asks quietly. His father simply ignores him, as though he hadn't spoken at all. After a period of silence, Adrien adjusts his bag on his shoulder, knuckles white on the leather strap.

"I'm going to write Ladybug a letter," he says. "I want you to give it to her in person when she next appears at court.”

"She won't.”

"How are you so sure?”

Again, Gabriel doesn't answer. Adrien's stomach boils with frustration, but he bites it back and forges onward.

"I'll write one to Chloe, too. When you see her, will you tell her I'm sorry?"

Gabriel tilts his chin in order to look at him, and Adrien turns aside, fixing his gaze to the far wall. He hunches his shoulders and bows his head, trying to ensure that no sign of Chat Noir shines through in either his face or his posture. 

“I’ll tell her,” says Gabriel, a slow concession. “Be quick, Adrien, it’s almost dark.”

"Thank you," he responds, with carefully rehearsed sincerity. "I'll be upstairs in Chloe's room."

The climb up the staircase is an ordeal in itself. His limbs are so heavy—his head so sluggish—that it feels like wading through a river of mud. By the time he reaches the upper level, his chest is flush with liquid fire. He's forced to lean on the wall for support as he measures his steps through the empty hall. 

When he reaches his old bedroom, he locks the door behind him. It won't do much—Sabrina has the key—but it can’t hurt to stall as long as possible.

The familiar room is still in disarray: trunks upended, dresses everywhere, a wide array of fashionable shoes scattered across the carpet like candied fruits. Chloe, getting dressed for the ball that ruined her life. Adrien dumps his satchel next to the bed and fishes the emerald ring out of his coat, watching it glitter as he turns it in his grip. 

He considers leaving it on Chloe’s desk, but keeping it with him feels like a promise: _you'll be here. I'll be here. I'll be here to give it back._

Adrien returns the ring to his pocket and opens the window overlooking the road.

He swings his legs out onto the roof.

  


* * *

  


The chestnut tree behind the chateau had been planted the same year Adrien was born, and it grew alongside him as the seasons passed, brushing long fingers against the walls of the house. At thirteen years old, it’d been his beanstalk. Whenever Gabriel locked him in his room and left for one of his afternoon outings, Adrien climbed out of his bedroom window, circling around to the back of the house and shimmying down its tawny trunk. 

He's heavier now than he was then, but by some distant miracle, he makes it to the ground. 

Time is moving differently now. Blackness clings to the edges of his sight, and his field of vision grows ever smaller. He’s far too aware of his footprints in the snow—a clumsy, snaking trail, like the tracks of a dying animal. The forest has never seemed so far.

Still, when he reaches it, Adrien knows the way. Every memory he has here he’s relived a hundred times—as though his time with Ladybug is etched in ink, a well-loved tapestry unfurled behind his eyes. He never knew which day she was coming, or which path he should take in order to find her. But he believes in the magic that led her to him: all throughout the summer, all throughout the fall; her comings and goings as sure as the tide. 

Around the bend, in the drooping shadow of three dead oaks, is where they fell asleep talking and woke after sunset, the light grown long and honeyed around them. Across the creek, frozen over to ice, is where he watched her shoot for the very first time. By the streambed, long since covered in snow, is where they lay side by side on the hottest day of summer, tipsy on liqueur from the storeroom downstairs. Ladybug had rolled him onto his back, holding him still and breathless beneath her, and lowered her deadly lips to his skin. He remembers every place she kissed him: temple, forehead, cheeks and nose; his mouth last of all, slow enough to starve. 

He remembers, clear as day, how no words had passed between them; and how fear had yawned inside him, circling the shape of his weakness, when she set her sights on Paris and took his heartbeat with her.

Adrien cuts a wild path through the woods, crossing his tracks until they're impossible to trace. He stomps his feet on the frozen creek, and when the ice doesn’t give, he steps into the streambed. He walks long enough that his footprints vanish behind him, and the trees grow dense in every direction despite the skeletal cast of their branches. 

_Nightfall._ All he has to do is make it to nightfall. 

When he finally stops walking, the sun is about to set. The trees open outward, like the walls of a hidden room, and reveal a wide clearing sunken in snow. It isn’t too far from the heirloom oaks where he and Ladybug met for the first time. Too far in for his father to follow—but his lady would find him. As ever. As always. 

It's with a great, collapsing relief that he sinks to a seat at the edge of the glade, laying his heavy head to rest.

  


* * *

  


When Adrien wakes up, he's curled on his side in a sea of golden light. 

There's a cool hand against his forehead, smoothing back his sweat-soaked hair. It's the only thing that Adrien can feel. The rest of his body has spilled into the air, like salt diffused through a glass of water. A noise squeezes out of him, small and parched.

"Adrien, look up."

He cracks his eyes open, blinking blearily. At first he can't make sense of what he's looking at. She looks the way he feels, all blurred at the edges—her hair spun gold, like the fading light of day; her eyes bright green, like forest moss. 

“My treasure, you’re sick. You’ve barely breathing.” Her voice is the voice of rustling leaves, but the branches criss-crossing the sky are bare. “I’ve waited so long to be allowed to see you. What happened to you in the time I was gone?”

He’s heard her before, but never this clearly. _Adrien, Adrien._ A ghost in the wood.

"I should have known,” says Emilie Agreste. “Dramatic timing was always my strength.”

Another noise leaves him, this one louder. He tries to sit up—tries to look her in the face—but his body is too heavy, as though it’s sewn full of stones. 

"Maman, is it you?" His tongue is swollen against the roof of his mouth. "How can you be—how are you _here?_ " 

Emilie doesn't answer, but her hand grows heavy against Adrien's forehead. It reminds him of where he is—of the poison in his bloodstream—of everything, _everything_ , that's happened since he saw her last. 

"How are you here?" he asks once again. "We found you. We buried you. You should have moved on." 

His mother bends over him, long golden hair spilling over her shoulder. She smells like petrichor, sweet and rich; like the perfume in the bottle on his father's desk. She's filled with breath, with voice, with _life_ —as though she's truly beside him, whole and well.

(She isn't. He's alone. He knows that—he's alone.)

"Do you remember the story I told you when you were little? About the curious child who got lost in the woods, and the wolf that disguised itself to devour her, and the hunter who saved her by cutting open its belly?"

"I remember all of your stories," he mumbles. His eyelids are too heavy to force them to stay open. 

"That's the best way I can think to describe it. Your huntress is coming, and so is your wolf." She pulls him against her, his head in her lap. "She's in danger, Adrien. I've come here to warn you. I won't be able to save her again."

"What do you mean? Who's in danger, maman?"

"I saw her last summer, walking the old paths, searching for lost travellers between the century oaks." Her voice grows soft and far away. "Your father saw her, too. He called out to her, Adrien. She followed his voice to save him, and he struck her from behind."

All at once, his peace is shattered. Adrien's entire body goes cold, paired with the sense that his chest is being crushed between two enormous, grinding stones. 

" _What?_ " 

"I spoke in his ear. She's nothing but a girl. How can you stand to kill her? She's no older than our son."

"Ladybug?" he croaks urgently. "You're talking about Ladybug?"

"When your father had fled, I led you straight to her. You followed the sound of my voice into the woods, and you found her." Emilie smooths his hair behind his ears. "You were always so quick to mind me, weren't you? You always listened to what I told you."

He reaches for her blindly, trying to touch her, to hold onto her hand with limp, nerveless fingers. But his limbs are leaden against his sides, and his mother slips away from him, like a half-forgotten melody. 

"Listen to me now. There isn't much time. The king's huntress is coming to save you, but she'll only succeed if you save her first." Her voice is too far now—too far to hold onto. "Your father won't hear me. He won't hear you, either. You can welcome a wolf through the door of your house—let him dress in your clothes, let him sleep in your bed—but Adrien, he's a wolf nonetheless."

She pulls him closer, ever closer. But whatever magic allows her to be here, it's wearing thin, stretched out like the centuries. 

"Oh," she says softly. "The curtain falls."

"Wait," says Adrien, cracked with desperation. "Maman, wait, you have to tell me what to do." Her arms are still around him, but she's fading faster and faster, bits and pieces of her falling away through the growing cracks in Adrien's consciousness. "Stay with me—please—just stay a minute longer. Tell me how I'm supposed to protect her."

He can hear her heartbeat, soft and steady, beating against his back as she speaks into his ear. 

"You aren't a child any longer. You aren't lost when you're in these woods." She presses a kiss against his temple. "Be brave, my darling, as I know you can be, and it'll be many long years before I see you again." 

She falls away, then, and the world falls with her. For one timeless moment, everything is golden: like sunlight across the meadow, like embers in the hearth, like the frosted windows of Paris spilling radiance into the night. 

Then the sun slips away behind the shadows of the trees, and everything goes dark behind Adrien’s closed eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you do one thing today, then please look at [Hancreate's beautiful art piece](https://hancreates.tumblr.com/post/189670736301/this-one-is-admittedly-a-little-more-racey-than-i) inspired by this chapter! Thank you so much!


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